


Meeting Halfway

by traitorhero



Series: Written in Blood and Gore and Ink [1]
Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, soulmate dysfunction
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 15:31:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6014224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traitorhero/pseuds/traitorhero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone has a soulmark. What your relationship becomes is entirely up to you.</p><p>Sam’s known who her soulmate is for almost four years. Four years without an acknowledgement of the words they scrawled on each other’s skin, or the other three marks on her back. </p><p>Then Hannah and Beth disappear, a weekend with friends goes horribly wrong, and she loses Josh. But there are still four marks on her back, even though two should have faded into scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. february 2, 2015

It wasn’t the warmest in the Washington’s lodge, and the slight draft that brushed against her damp skin only enhanced her chills. Sam cursed under her breath, but a fond smile touched her lips as she left the bathroom, her towel wrapped around her tightly. Josh and Chris were probably having a laugh down in the living room, with Ashley rolling her eyes at their antics.

Closing the door behind her, she couldn’t help but look to Hannah and Beth’s room. They were close to her size, but Sam put the thought out of her head. She knew from a quick peek while her bath filled that nothing in the room had changed from last year. Keeping it in the same condition meant that when they came back, they would find everything like they had left it.

Sam shook her head slightly, putting those melancholy thoughts back in their box. Josh had set this weekend up to be about them, and about moving past what happened last year. And this reeked of something that he would rope Chris and Ashley into doing. Sam went to the railing and leaned over slightly, noticing the balloons set up around the stairs with arrows painted on them.

“Chris?” she said loudly as she walked to the stairs. “Josh?”

Neither of them replied, and she rolled her eyes, tugging the towel again to make sure that it was tight against her back. It didn’t really bother her to show her soulmarks, but the only people who had actually seen all of her marks were the twins. Hannah had been jealous before flashing the words _“Are you new here?”_ scrawled on the bottom of her foot. Beth’s _“I can’t believe I finally met you”_ on her ribs had their little group in hysterics as they tried to imagine the kind of person that she’d end up with. They’d finally decided on horribly romantic, much to Beth’s consternation.

Sam wondered if their soulmates knew that they would never meet. If their words had faded to a pale white, indistinguishable from scars unless you knew what you were looking at.

The rugs that the Washingtons had thrown across almost every wooden floor was to her benefit now. By the time she reached the hallway to the main landing, her heart beating fast from the unexpected gong of the clock, her feet were dry, if not a little cold. Then again, she was shivering anyway, the warm heat that had suffused the bathroom nothing more than a memory. She debated turning around to go back to it, but let it drop. It was better to be cold and naked once, rather than getting warm only to freeze again.

“Chris?” she said again. “Mike? Emily? This is really getting out of hand, okay? It was all very funny, ha ha, look at Sam walking around in a towel, maybe we’ll see her soulmarks, but now I really just want this to be over, all right?”

Nobody answered her as she walked down to the living room. The hair on the back of her neck prickled as she saw that the fire Josh had lit earlier had been put out. Walking into the room, she crept around the sofa, trying to see if anyone was waiting to jump out at her. Sam bit her lip as she walked over to the fireplace, holding her hand out over the grate. The heat from it was barely enough to warm the palm of her hand, which meant that someone had turned it off almost as soon as she had gone up to take her bath.

Sam rubbed her arms, trying to soothe the prickling unease that crawled over her skin. A bobbing balloon in the corner of her vision drew her gaze. She padded over to them, the rugs muffling her footsteps. Tugging on the string, she pulled it down, noting the arrow drawn in what looked like white paint pointing towards the steps to the bottom floor.

“Okay, if you were trying to freak me out, guess what, you succeeded,” she said, letting the balloon go to bob with the others.

Following the balloons, she walked down the stairs. The cinema room was open with what looked like light from the screen illuminating the hallway in front of it. Stopping in front of it, Sam reached for the flashlight Josh had left earlier. If worst came to worst, she could always hit Josh or whoever came up with the stupid idea in the first place with it. A creak behind her made her turn around and click the flashlight on. The low powered beam didn’t show her anything, and she made her way into the cinema room.

“Hey, guys,” she called, entering the cinema room. “Come on! I’m done with this! I really don’t appreciate the silent treatment here!”

Whatever film had been queued was one of the older ones in black and white. Beth had always liked them better, but Hannah and Josh had almost always outvoted her. The Washington movie nights were known in high school to be reserved almost exclusively for horror, gore, violence, and, on one memorable occasion, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Emily had almost never forgiven Beth for that one, never mind that she had met her three soulmates that night. Apparently all of her marks, except for Matt’s, referenced the movie.

She couldn’t stop herself from letting out a short scream as the doors to the cinema room snapped shut behind her with a bang. Sam swung the beam of her flashlight across the chairs, making sure no one was going to jump out at her from behind them. The adrenaline coursing through her made the beam wobble as she turned it back to the now closed doors, but, as far as she could tell, there was no one else in the room with her.

“Hello Samantha. Looking for me?”

Sam froze. Those words had been emblazoned on her back, just below those of her first soulmate, for years. She had dreamed of thousands of ways that those words could be spoken, but none of them made sense for what was happening now. The words her soulmate continued to say made her look at the screen, only to see herself in the bath.

“Why are you showing this to me?” she finally asked after trying and failing to find her words. Part of her wished that they were more outraged, but the terror of knowing that someone had filmed her in the bath made her voice tremble.

“Why are you watching?”

Sam turned to look at the projector, but it was too bright to tell her if there was someone in that room. Turning back around, she saw the film stutter, as if someone was changing the reel, before revealing Josh and Ashley tied to a wall with a saw blade whirring in front of them. The film cut, focusing on Josh and his panicked face as the blade came towards him.

“Josh!” she shouted, her hand reaching out for him even as the blade cut into - and through - him. “Oh my god, what did you do?”

“I’m going to give ten seconds,” the voice droned on.

The cold stone of the wall calmed Sam down enough to hear her soulmate... no, the psycho who had murdered her soulmate, begin his countdown. Vaguely, she was aware of the litany of no’s under her breath as she tried to figure out what to do. She slid down it slightly, the terror twisting her stomach and making it hard to breathe.

“Please, no,” she cried as the doors burst open.

“Sa-am,” the Psycho hissed.

Her breathing hitched as she stood, facing the man who supposedly her soulmate. The man who had _killed_ one of her soulmates. She shoved the panic bubbling up in her chest, her eyes skittering across the room to the only other door. His hand reached for her and she jerked herself away, almost tripping over her feet as she ran for the door and threw it open.

Sam slammed into the door at the other end of the hall, her hand scrabbling at the handle. Once it opened, she ran in, slamming it closed behind her and vaulting over the bed into the bathroom. She heard the Psycho swear behind her as she slammed the bathroom door closed as well. She looked around the basement landing, her eyes catching the open door to the boiler room. It wasn’t the best option, but she knew there was at least a chance that she could hide among the odds and ends down there.

As she ran down the stone steps, colder than the wood against her feet, she barely remembered the broken step Josh had warned her about earlier. She hopped the step, misjudging it by the smallest amount and smashing her shoulder against the concrete wall and scraping it.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she swore under her breath. Sam looked around for someplace to hide, but nothing stood out to her. To her right was Mrs. Washington’s wine cellar, which had a door at the end of it, which led to the old lodge. The twins and she had snuck down there on dares and bets during past winter getaways, often to the dismay of Mrs. Washington. She had never outright forbidden them from doing it, and, if Sam was lucky, she had kept the door handle on top of one of the wine cabinets.

The sound of footsteps sealed her choice. She dashed for the wine cellar, stopping at the last cabinet and trying to jump and grab the handle perched on top of it. Sam looked back, seeing the Psycho walking towards her. When she had been down here with the twins, one of them had given the other a boost to grab the handle. Clenching her eyes shut and praying that Mrs. Washington would forgive her, she pulled at the cabinet. As the Psycho entered the wine cellar, it tipped, sending the handle clattering across the floor. She bent down, uncaring of modesty, missing it in one swipe before grabbing it in her free hand.

Sam slammed the handle in and turned it, looking over her shoulder to see the Psycho stepping through the wood of the cabinet. She closed it, slamming the lock into place. She looked at the small window set beside it, a shriek escaping her as her eyes met those of her attacker. She grabbed the small metal door that would cover it as his hand reached through for the lock. It barely missed his fingers as she shut it, and she heard his muttered curses through the thick wood, as well as what sounded like his foot kicking it.

Sam looked around the small storage room, surprised to see that the light was still on. The image of Chris in his ridiculous monk costume sprang to her mind. This must have been the room where he had found the props, which meant that the Psycho could get in here from the boiler room. Spurred on by this thought, she went to the door on the opposite side of the room, hoping that the Washingtons hadn’t sealed off the entrance to the old hotel in the last year.

The door didn’t open, but it was older and less sturdy than the door she had come through. Sam squared her shoulders and took a running start at it. Crashing through it, she remembered too late that the reason she and the twins had stopped going into the old lodge was because the wood steps that led to it had finally broken. She landed on her side, the scrape on her shoulder being joined by what felt like a bruise on her ribs and a cut on her knee.

“Fuck, that hurt,” she muttered as she got to her feet.

The flashlight had survived her tumble, which meant that she had some light to make sure that she didn’t step on something liable to give her tetanus. She looked side to side, hoping that one of the rooms they had explored a few years ago would offer her refuge. Unfortunately, it seemed like the old lodge had degraded even further than she remembered, the few doors on the hallway blocked by ceiling beams, or just collapsed in on themselves.

As she reached the cross of the hallway, she stopped, unsure of where to go. Hannah and Beth hadn’t taken her very far into the old lodge, speaking from experience when they told her about some of the areas definitely being unsafe. Sam’s eyes darted to the other hallway that she had played in with the twins, pretending to be the ghosts of murdered lovers left in the lodge. There was always the chance that one of those rooms was a viable place to hide.

The only other option was the old elevator. Mrs. Washington had expressly forbidden them from going near it, even as she had denied knowing of their activities. The sound of approaching footsteps sealed her decision. Sam winced as her foot dragged over the uneven wood, and hobbled towards the elevator. Jumping down onto the small concrete ledge below what had been the door, she pressed herself against the bricks. At the last second she pressed the flashlight against her towel to block its light and held her breath. The footsteps stopped just above her head, and she shut her eyes, praying to whoever would listen to let her escape.

“Here little kitty,” the Psycho whispered above her. “Here pussy pussy.”

Her lungs were burning, but Sam continued to hold her breath. One little gasp could let him know that she was right under his feet. And she wasn’t ready to die yet. A metal clunk made her jump, and she bit her tongue to stop from letting out a little cry of surprise.

“Fuck!”

The sound of him walking away let her relax slightly, and Sam slowly let out the breath she had been holding. Unbidden, a few tears slipped down her face. She wiped them away hastily, looking around for another way out of the elevator shaft. A few feet to her left there was an open ventilation shaft, and, without any other options, she shimmied towards it.

The light from her flashlight shone against the old metal walls of the shaft. Sam crawled in far enough that a few feet separated her from the opening. As she stopped, what happened hit her. A choked sob escaped her throat, and this time Sam couldn’t stop the tears that ran down her face.

Josh was dead. And she’d never admitted to him that he was her soulmate.


	2. september 14, 2010

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Small note - I have the twins and Josh in the same grade of school here. There's only a year or so of age difference between them, and I figured that it would be easier to have them in the freshman year together - it also explains how all of them end up as friends, rather than Josh just being their cool older brother who hangs around with them.
> 
> Other than that, this is the first flashback chapter! I hope you enjoy!
> 
> ****Edited 10/16/16 with the canonical last names of the characters!****

This time, her father had promised, they would be staying for awhile. Sam had rolled her eyes, but two weeks later she was no longer the new girl at school, and he hadn’t even mentioned moving. They had even bought a house off the base, something that they hadn’t done since her dad had gotten promoted and they had bounced around the States. Her parents had even enrolled her in some fancy rich kids private school, probably as an apology and as a promise. It wasn’t like they could get their money back if they decided to move again. And, having snuck a look at the bill, it would be an expensive mistake.

“Psst, Sam!”

Knocked out of her reverie, Sam looked over to Ashley, who was motioning for her to move seats. Sam grabbed her purse and took the seat next to her, dropping her books onto the desk. 

“What’s so important that I had to move?” she asked. “Do you need a tampon or something?”

“What? No,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “Did you hear that they’re combining our homeroom with Mrs. Templeton’s? Apparently she went into labor yesterday, and they figured it was easier to have Mr. Ramos handle both.”

“And I had to move to sit here because...?”

“Because I thought you’d want to sit next to me?” she said. “It’s not like you can’t get your squirrel watching in from here.”

“Good point,” Sam agreed. “And it’s not like Matt will mind. He’s been begging to switch seats with me ever since I took his.”

“It’s his fault for being sick your first day,” Ashley said. 

“I wasn’t sick, Ash,” Matt chimed in, swiping the seat Sam had vacated. “My mom took me to get my physical for football.”

“And it took you the whole day to recover from the experience?

“I had to get three shots,” he defended himself. “It was a very traumatic experience.”

“Feel free to reclaim your seat,” Sam said teasingly. “I think I prefer this one anyway.”

“Why did you change seats anyway?”

“Mrs. Templeton’s homeroom is combining with ours for the rest of the year,” Ashley told him.

Before he could answer, the door to their room opened, and a flood of people entered. Most of them headed in their own groups for desks, with one group of four splitting off and taking the desks in front of them. Two of the girls, twins by the look of them, took the desks between Sam and Matt, and smiled warmly at Sam as they sat down. The two boys who accompanied them took the seats in front of her and Ashley, deep in an argument.

“I’m telling you Chris, you’ve got it all wrong,” the dark haired one said. “Mathematically, it doesn’t make sense. Here, if I can-”

He broke off in an annoyed huff, before turning around in his seat and flashing her what was probably meant to be a suave grin. She raised an eyebrow and smiled back, which seemed to disarm him. 

“Can I borrow a pencil?” he asked.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl for her, even as she reached into her pencil bag and pulled one out. The words were exactly like the ones on her back. The first ones on her back, anyway. The other three were below them, sitting right above her tailbone. It was odd for soulmarks to be so orderly, but not entirely unheard of. It made it easy enough to hide the marks if she wanted to.

“Yeah, sure,” she replied, kicking herself as soon as the words left her mouth.

His smile seemed to freeze, and he snatched the pencil and turned back around quickly. Sam sighed, noting absently the red ears of her unnamed new classmate as he haltingly continued his discussion with his friend. Maybe she wasn’t what he had expected? Or maybe she was reading too much into it, and he wasn’t actually her soulmate. It wasn’t unusual to hear someone ask for a pencil after all.

The two twins seemed to have paused in their discussion, the one with shorter hair narrowing her eyes at the dark haired boy. She switched her gaze to Sam, sticking her hand out and giving her a large smile.

“Sorry about Josh,” she said. “Hannah and I have been trying to teach him manners for years, but I don’t think anything will get through our brother’s head.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “I’m Sam, and this is Ashley.”

Ashley gave Hannah and Beth a small wave, before leaning closer to Chris and the newly identified Josh. Her brow wrinkled, and Sam tilted her head at her questioningly. Ashley jerked her head towards the argument and and checked herself out of their conversation.

“So, Sam, I’ve never seen you around here before,” Beth said. “You’re new here, right?”

“I moved here a few weeks ago, yeah,” Sam replied. “It’s nice. And warm.”

“Where’d you move from?” Hannah cut in. Her sister slapped her shoulder, and a slight blush colored Hannah’s cheeks.

“ For the past six months we were in North Dakota ,” Sam told her. “Before that was Maine. Then Washington D.C. and Virginia.”

“That’s a lot of moving,” Beth said. “I mean, we move between California and Alberta, but that’s just for summer and winter vacation.”

“Army brat,” Sam explained. “My dad got promoted about two years ago. He served on a staff for awhile, then they bounced him around until we ended up here.”

“Really? That must have sucked.”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Sam said, with a shrug. “I got to go to a lot of cool places.”

“So, are you going to be moving again?” Hannah asked.

Sam shook her head. “Not that I know of. My dad’s posting here is supposed to last for at least the next couple years.”

“That’s great!” Beth said. She and Hannah shared a grin, and Sam had the feeling that she was going to be roped into something. Both twins turned to look at her, still smiling, and Sam couldn’t help but return it.

“So, what do you have planned for the weekend?” Hannah asked. 

“Not much. Might unpack my room a bit more.”

The twins shared that smile again, and Sam just knew that there was something she wasn’t understanding. Their cheshire grins made her want to beg some higher power for intervention, even though they didn’t seem to be using their powers of being ridiculously nice to her for ill.

“Okay, so we’re having movie night at our house this Friday. Usually it’s just us, Josh, and Chris, but the ‘rents don’t really mind if we invite people. Do you think your’s would mind?”

“Probably not?” Sam said, hating the slight questioning lilt on her words. “I mean, Mom would probably want to meet your parents, but she’s usually cool with it.”

“We can pick you up to. Dad’s on break until he finishes whatever  _ masterpiece _ ,” Hannah said with an airy wave of her hand, “he’s currently working on, and Mom won’t have a problem stepping out of her studio.”

“Hell, she’ll probably drag Dad away from his computer,” Beth said. 

“Hopefully,” Hannah agreed. “I don’t think we’ve seen him except at dinner this week. And he missed two of them.”

Sam snorted, clapping her hand to her mouth to try and stop her giggles. Instead of getting angry, the twins joined in her laughing. Sam turned to look at Ashley, who was leaning closer and closer to Josh and Chris’ argument. Neither boy had noticed her intrusion, even though she was more than half out of her chair in her attempt to see whatever the Josh was sketching out on paper.

“So, does she like that game too?” Beth asked, gesturing vaguely in Ashley’s direction. “Chris and Josh have been playing for years, and we just tune him out at this point.”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Ashley and I mostly talk about cross-country practice. And then we ended up as lab partners, so it all ballooned from there.”

“Ashley’s new too, right?” Hannah asked. “I don’t remember her from last year.”

“Us new kids got to stick together, you know?” Sam said. 

“She should come too,” Beth said decisively. “Definitely the more the merrier, right Hannah?”

Whatever Hannah was about to say was drowned out by Josh hitting his head lightly against his desk. He groaned, and the twins giggled at his discomfort.

“Chris, bro, I’m telling you that you’re wrong,” Josh said. “Just because your Gorgons can take a ton of damage doesn’t discount the amount of Energy you have to expend to summon them.”

“I’m telling you, Josh, an all Gorgon deck is literally unstoppable, no matter what your math says. I’ve won three months in a row at the comic shop’s tournament with it,” Chris said, crossing his arms across his chest. “Admit it, you’re just mad that your Sirens can’t compete against the awesome might that is my Gorgons.”

“Actually, Gorgons are really weak against Psions,” Ashley told him, cutting into their conversation. Chris turned in his chair, his eyes widening as his eyes met hers. One hand went to his bicep, his knuckles turning white as he gripped it.

“But Psions are one of the weakest options unless you flood the field with them,” he responded. His face fell the instant he said them, but Ashley gasped, her hand going to her hip. 

Josh looked between the two, his eyes briefly going to Sam, before a shit-eating grin crossed his face. Sam heard either Hannah or Beth mutter something under their breath, but neither did anything as Josh jumped onto his desk. He thrust his arms into the air, drawing all the attention in the room to him.

“Thank whatever deity there is!” he crowed. “Chris will actually get laid sometime this century!”

“Oh my god,” Ashley whispered, her cheeks quickly turning crimson.

She looked at Sam, silently begging her to do something. At any other time, Sam would have helped her, but the shock of meeting her possible-soulmate, combined with Ashley definitely meeting her soulmate, was too much.

Which meant, when Chris kicked Josh’s chair, she was in no position to stop him.

The two resounding cracks as Ashley’s face was pushed into her desk by Josh’s flailing body, and then Josh’s impact with the ground, stopped everything in the room. Mr. Ramos, who hadn’t said anything when Josh had made his pronouncement, jumped to his feet. Chris met Sam’s eyes, and she saw the surprise she felt mirrored on his face.

“Fuck,” Sam heard Josh say, the muffled words drifting up from somewhere near her feet. 

“Oh shit,” Beth said, sticking her finger in front of Sam’s face, and directing her gaze away from Chris to Ashley.

Ashley had her hands cupped in front of her face, blood leaking out between her fingers. Ashley looked at her, before her eyes scrunched shut in pain and she moved her hands. A shower of blood fell from her hands, spattering on her desk. And, unfortunately for him, Josh. 

“Oh, that is fucking disgusting,” Matt said. 

Sam turned and glared at him, but a sob from Ashley made her turn back around. Her hands were clasped around her nose again, but tears were streaming down her face. Sam stood, shimmying behind her chair to get next to her. Mr. Ramos stood by Josh’s feet, his complexion paling as he stared at the two bloodied teens.

Careful not to step on Josh, Sam moved to crouch next to Ashley, her hand rubbing up and down her friend’s back in what she hoped was a soothing manner. Chris, in stark difference, pushed at Josh with the toe of his shoe. Josh attempted to swat him away, but groaned instead when the motion made him move his head. 

“Samantha, and um-”

“Chris Hartley,” Chris supplied.

“Christopher,” Mr. Ramos said, ignoring Chris’ wince at the use of his full name. “If you could help Ashley and-”

“Josh,” Beth said.

“Thank you,” he said, “Joshua to the nurse’s office?” 

“Sure,” Sam said.

“Hannah’s-” Chris began, only to stop when said twin shook her head at him. He looked imploringly at Beth, who mimicked her twin. He sighed, nodding his head. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Truly my best friend,” Josh muttered as he rolled over slightly. He accepted the hand that Chris held out to him, only to slump against him when he was vertical. Chris rolled his eyes as he slung Josh’s arm over his shoulder.

“You okay?” Sam asked as Ashley stood. Sam grabbed her arm when the little head shake she gave made her wobble. Moving her grip across Ashley’s back, they followed the stumbling duo out into the hallway.

“This wasn’t what I pictured,” Ashley whispered, just loud enough for Sam to hear.

“Meeting your soulmate?”

“”Yeah,” Ashley said. “I thought... I don’t know. That I’d meet him later? In college, maybe?”

“It’s not a be all end all,” Sam told her. “Who knows, you know?”

“Easy for you to say,” she said, her words muffled. She snorted, some of the blood spraying from between her fingers to hit Sam.  “You haven’t met your soulmate. You know what people expect when you meet them.”

Sam bit her tongue to stop herself from revealing her possible meeting. Josh hadn’t said anything when he said her words. And maybe he already had a soulmate. Or he wasn’t her soulmate. Sam shoved the thoughts in a box, mentally labelling it as  _ Shit Sam would figure out later _ . Right now, she had help Ashley. 

“Just because the movies say you have to be with him doesn’t mean that you absolutely have to,” Sam argued. “It’s always your choice.”

“Well, right now I don’t want to be near him.”

“Okay.”

“Or his stupid friend. I mean, really, who does something like that?”

Chris stopped ahead of them, one hand holding Josh against the wall as he tried to open the door to the Office. He pushed the door open as much as possible, grabbing Josh as he slumped forward again. Sam pulled Ashley around him, using her open hand to hold the door open. Chris grunted his thanks as he shuffled into the room with Josh’s dead weight.

“Come on, bro,” Chris muttered as they followed them in. “You weigh, like, five hundred pounds.”

“And make it so you can’t show off your muscles in front of -mmgph!”

Chris glanced at both of them, his hand across Josh’s mouth. Sam couldn’t help the small bubble of laughter that escaped her. 

“What’s going on- Oh my goodness!”

“Hi Mrs. Dunne,” Chris said sheepishly.

“What happened this time?” Mrs. Dunne asked, coming around the corner to help him with Josh’s dead weight.

“I fell,” Josh said, as he tried to get his feet under him . Mrs. Dunne hummed slightly, her eyes flicking to Sam and Ashley. “And Chris’ soulmate broke it.”

If she showed any surprise at Josh’s pronouncement, Mrs. Dunne didn’t show it. Her eyes flicked to the hands Ashley had cupped on her face. “And her nose, I imagine,” she said with a sigh. 

Mrs. Dunne took Josh’s other arm, helping Chris walk him through the door. They followed the trio to the nurse’s office, watching as Mrs. Dunne sat Josh on one of the cots. She gestured to the other one, and Sam walked Ashley over, smiling when the other girl scooted so that her back was against the wall. The stark white lighting of the room highlighted the blood that coated Ashley’s hands and shirt. Sam looked down at her own clothes, unsurprised when she saw the same red stains on her clothes. Chris’ polo had patch of blood on the shoulder, matching the drips of blood on Josh’s shirt. 

“I’m pretty sure he’s out of it,” Chris told Mrs. Dunne. “I mean, more than usual.”

“I’ll call his parents,” she said as she went to the cabinet. Pulling out a few gauze packages, she ripped one open and put it against Josh’s head. A dark spot appeared at the middle of the white square as she pulled his hand to hold it in place. “If you would be so kind as to grab my phone, Chris? It’s on the counter.”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Chris replied.

Mrs. Dunne rolled her eyes as he left, a fond smile on her face. She turned to look at Ashley, motioning for her to move her hands. Sam cringed as she saw Ashley’s bloodied face, the odd set of her nose making her stomach turn uncomfortably.

“That’s definitely broken,” Mrs. Dunne said, opening a gauze package. She dabbed at the blood still trickling from Ashley’s nose, before dropping the gauze into her hands. It turned red immediately, soaking up the pool of blood that had collected in her hands. “Now, I don’t have your parent’s number on speed dial like Joshua’s-”

“I resent that,” Josh cut in. Mrs. Dunne looked over her shoulder at him, and he grinned weakly.

“Joshua, I’ve seen you in my office more times than I have your sisters,” she told him. She turned back to Ashley, who was smiling slightly at the no nonsense way she spoke to Josh. “Now, I’ll need both of your parent’s numbers. Are they at work right now?”

Ashley shook her head. “My dad’s home. Mom’s out of town at a conference.”

“After I call the Washington's, I'll call him, then” Mrs. Dunne said. 

“Found it!” Chris said, bursting back into the room. 

He held the phone out to Mrs. Dunne, who took it. She looked at the two of them, seemingly taking in their appearance for the first time. 

“You’ll need to call your parents for new clothes,” she told them. “I can’t imagine you’d like to go through the rest of the day with dried blood on you.”

“Not really, no,” Sam said.

“I’m assuming you both have cell phones?” she asked. Sam nodded, seeing Chris do the same out of the corner of her eye. “Give your parents a call. You can sit in the waiting room until they come.”

“Catch you later, bro,” Chris said, leaving the room as quickly as he entered. 

“Aw, don’t leave me here,” Josh whined. He glanced at Sam, looking away quickly when she held his gaze. 

“You going to be okay?” Sam said, looking to Ashley.

“Probably,” she replied, her voice thicker than it was before. She leaned forward slightly, and Sam’s stomach bubbled uncomfortably as more blood dripped into her fingers. “Sorry about your shirt.”

“Nothing a little hydrogen peroxide won’t get out,” Sam said. “Call me later, okay? I’ll come and drop off anything you missed.”

Ashley nodded, and Sam turned around before she saw any more blood. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, pulling up her Mom’s contact information and hitting dial. Chris was already sitting on one of the three plastic chairs in the waiting room, deep in what sounded like a familiar conversation topic.

“Sam, honey, is something wrong?” her mom asked, picking up after a few rings. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Sam said. “There was an accident and Ashley got a nosebleed. I just need some new clothes.”

“How bad is it?”

“It’s not too bad,” she assured her. “Just a lot of spatter. It’s kind of gross, honestly.”

“Hmmm,” was the response. “I’ll just pick something out of one of your boxes. You really need to clean these out.”

“Yeah, I was planning on doing that this weekend,” Sam said. She paused, remembering the invitation Beth and Hannah had extended. “Actually, some girls from school invited me over for a movie night on Friday.”

“That sounds nice. Do you know where?”

“At their house, I think. I’ll have to ask.”

“We’ll talk about it later, then,” she said. “I’ll be there in about twenty minutes or so, if traffic is good.”

“Okay,” Sam said, sinking into a chair. “Love you.”

“Love you too, Sammy-bear.”

Sam smiled at the nickname, flipping her phone closed. She slouched slightly, looking at Chris as he finished his own conversation.

“Yeah, that’ll work,” Chris said into his phone. “Okay, see you then.” A blush spread across his cheeks, and his eyes cut to Sam. “Love you too, Mom.”

He shut the phone, setting it on the seat between them. Chris crossed his legs, looking at anything else in the room but her. With a sigh, he leaned his head against the concrete wall and turned to her slightly.

“You know, I think I’m fucked,” he said.

“Umm...” she said, unsure of what to say to that.

“I don’t even say more than one sentence to her, and she has a broken nose!” he said, throwing his hands up in the air. “I mean, it wasn’t technically my fault, but still.”

“You did kick Josh’s chair,” Sam said.

“Okay, I accept partial blame,” Chris agreed. “Still Josh’s fault, though. I’m Chris, by the way.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam said, letting a small smile creep over her face. “I heard when you told Mr. Ramos.”

“Then that makes one of us,” he told her. “I was kind of freaking out about the blood and soulmate thing, so I didn’t catch yours.”

“Samantha Giddings,” she said. “Though if you ever call me Samantha, I reserve the right to-”

“My first-born son?” Chris supplied. “Please don’t say my balls. I’d like to keep those where they are.”

“What? No! I’ll punch you.”

“Oh,” Chris said, a considering tone in his voice. “That doesn’t sound too bad.”

“Hope you never have to find out,” Sam teased.

“I hope so too. Have you seen my face? I don’t need any more disadvantages.”

Sam gave him a considering look. Aside from a few pimples on his chin, he wasn’t too bad in the looks department. Not exactly her cup of tea, but the blue eyes behind his glasses obviously believed what he said. 

“You’re not giving me a lot of options here,” she joked. “Though I should probably let Ashley have the first go. Seems fair, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, god, please don’t joke like that,” he said, dropping his head into his hands. “I mean, she probably already hates me, so she probably will anyway.”

“She doesn’t...” Sam trailed off.

“That’s what I thought,” Chris said, his words muffled. 

“Look, she doesn’t hate you,” she told him. Sam reached out and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I mean, she doesn’t even really know you. Or Josh. Out of the two of you, I think she hates him more.”

“Great.”

“You just met each other, for christ's sakes. Just...” she paused, casting around for the right words. The possible-soulmate situation between her and Josh sprung to her mind. “Pretend that you aren’t soulmates.”

“Kind of hard to do when your best friend announces it to the entire class.”

“He didn’t say you were soulmates. Just that you were, you know-”

“Going to get to the bone zone, yeah.”

“Bone zone?” Sam asked. The skepticism in her voice made Chris turn to look at her, the corner of his lips quirking up.

“Josh,” he said by way of explanation. “Hang around him long enough, you pick up certain things.”

“Like weird ways of saying you found your soulmate?”

“And how to make movie props. Though we have won Best Group Costume the last few years with his sisters, so that’s actually cool.”

“So nobody really knows,” Sam said. “I mean, I do. And Mrs. Dunne, but I don’t think she’ll say anything.”

“And you think that if I pretend like we aren’t soulmates, Ashley will like me?”

“Maybe? I don’t have all the answers here.”

“But you guys are friends, right?”

“I mean, I guess? We were the only two people who haven’t been going here since kindergarten, so we started hanging out.”

“God, I’m so screwed,” Chris said, almost to himself. Sam rubbed her hand down his back soothingly as he let his head sink into his hands again. 

“You’re going to Hannah and Beth’s for that movie night on Friday, right? They invited me and Ashley.”

“Wait, really?” he asked. 

“Yes, really,” Sam said. “Just make sure Josh won’t do anything stupid? I’ll make sure Ashley doesn’t punch you more than you deserve.”

“Not really helping.”

Sam sat back in her chair, shaking her head. “It’ll work out Chris. Eventually.”

Two women walking through the office door cut off their conversation. Sam smiled at her mom, gratefully accepting the bag she handed over. The other woman sighed in exasperation at Chris  as she walked over to him, her hand ruffling his hair fondly.

“I’m assuming there’s a good explanation for what happened this time?” she said, handing him a stack of clothes. 

“Just Josh-”

“Being Josh,” his mom said, the refrain obviously familiar if her smile was anything to go by.

Sam raised an eyebrow at Chris, which was answered with an embarrassed grin. She jerked her head towards the bathroom, and he shook his head. Before she could get sucked into the conversation, she snuck into the bathroom. The clothes her mother had chosen for her weren’t the ones she would have gone with, but they were cute enough that it didn’t matter. Stuffing the bloodied clothes back into the bag, Sam gave herself a once over in the mirror. Spying a speck of blood on her neck, she grabbed a paper towel and wet it to dab it away. Satisfied, she left the bathroom, only to see her mom deep in conversation with Chris’ mom.

“Thank you,” Chris said lowly, abandoning her to the two women as he went into the bathroom. 

“You must be Sam,” Chris’ mom said, extending a hand to her. Sam shook it, before turning and handing the bag of bloody clothes to her mom. “I’m Mrs. Hartley. Chris was just telling us that Beth and Hannah invited you to the movie night on Friday?”

“Me and Ashley, yeah,” Sam replied. “If Mom let’s me, anyway.”

“Oh, the Washingtons are great,” Mrs. Hartley said. “Bob’s working on his next screenplay right now, so he’s actually home. Melinda’s thrilled, since his last production ended up taking a whole year longer than they expected.”

“Thanks Mom” Chris said, coming to stand next to Sam. He handed his mom a messy pile of clothes, which she took with an eyeroll. “We’ve got to get back to class, though.”

“I’ll pick you up after school,” Mrs. Hartley said. “It was nice meeting you, Sam.”

“You too, Mrs. Hartley,” Sam said. 

As they walked to their lockers, Sam looked at Chris. Seeing his frown, she bumped his shoulder lightly with her own. When he looked at her, she flashed him a smile, which he returned shakily.

“You’re in first lunch, right?” Sam asked.

“Um, yeah.”

“With Ashley not being here, I don’t really have anyone to sit with today,” she told him. “Mind if I sit with you?”

“Sounds good,” Chris said. “Usually Beth and Hannah sit with me and Josh, so they’ll probably be there.”

“See you then,” Sam said, turning down the hall with her locker.

A few people looked at her strangely when she walked into second period. Someone must have let the teacher know, because Ms. Lewin only motioned for Sam to take her seat. As she sat down, Sam caught sight of Hannah across the room.

“You okay?” she mouthed as Sam put her books under her chair. 

Sam nodded, but Ms. Lewin began to inform them of an upcoming test, so she switched her full attention to what was being said. When the bell rang, Sam wasn’t surprised when she was asked to stay after. By the time she was done handing in her classwork, she had to sprint to her next class. Third and fourth period passed without incident, even after Mike set fire to Matt’s shirt. 

By the time fifth period, lunch, came around, Sam had almost forgotten about her promise to sit with Chris at lunch. As she put her Chemistry books in her locker, Beth appeared next to her, almost making her drop her lunch bag. Sam squeaked, which made the other girl laugh.

“Chris said you were sitting with us today?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, shutting her locker door. “I mean, if I’m interrupting or something I can sit somewhere else.”

“It’s not even an issue,” Beth said, lacing her arm with Sam’s. “We’re just discussing what we want to watch on Friday night. Since you’re invited, you should have a say too.”

“I mean, I guess.”

“Maybe you can help me grab some leverage,” Beth said as they walked into the cacophony of the lunch room. Hannah waved them over to the table she had saved with Chris. “I’d like to watch something different for once.”

“Unlikely, Beth,” Chris said as they sat down. 

“Plus, Dad got a copy of  _ Rush of Blood _ from Mr. Martinez,” Hannah said. “And it’s the extended cut.”

“The horror movie?” Sam asked. “I thought that wasn’t out on DVD for another month.”

“Mr. Washington always gets stuff like that,” Chris said. “Perks of being famous in the business.”

“What?”

The twins glared at Chris who winced. Hannah punched him lightly in the shoulder, making his drink slosh out over his hand. Chris swore under his breath, grabbing a napkin wiping up the spill before it could get onto his clothes.

“Really Hannah?” he said. “I already had to change clothes once. You want me to get another record with Mrs. Dunne?”

“Please, like you and Josh don’t already have all of the records,” Beth said. “But, yeah, Sam, our dad is...” 

“A pretty fucking big deal in the movie business?” Chris supplied. Hannah hip checked him, which he returned in kind. Beth rolled her eyes at their antics.

“Only horror movies,” she corrected him.

“Wait, your dad is Bob Washington?” Sam asked. “He made  _ Winter Feast _ , right?”

“Oh please don’t tell me you like horror movies,” Beth said, lowering her head to rest on the table. Across from them, Hannah and Chris high-fived.

“Sorry,” Sam told her sheepishly. “My dad used to watch the campy eighties ones with me. He likes your dad’s stuff too. Something about practical effects over CGI or something.”

“So, that’s four for horror,” Hannah said with a cackle. “We’ll have to check with Ashley, but even if she votes with you, that’s still two to one.”

“If we have to watch horror movies, I want to watch  _ Eyes Without a Face _ ,” Beth said. 

Hannah groaned. “Couldn’t you choose one without subtitles?”

As the two devolved into an argument, Chris beckoned her to scoot closer to him. Sam did, moving her peanut butter and jelly sandwich out of the way as Beth leaned over the table towards her sister. 

“You really didn’t know?” Chris asked as they watched the twins argument unfold.

Sam saw Matt turn in his seat, the guy he was sitting with pointing at their table. He met her eyes and raised an eyebrow. She shook her head and he nodded, focusing his attention on the blonde that was sitting with them. 

“Was I supposed to?” Sam asked. 

“I mean, most people here do,” Chris said. “But the twins and Josh have been here since kindergarten, so the shine’s kind of worn off for everyone.”

Sam shrugged. “This is LA, and my parents got me into a fancy rich kid’s school. I’m not really surprised.”

“Just wait til you see the mansion,” Chris told her. 

“Fine, we can watch your stupid French movie,” Hannah agreed. Beth sat back down in her seat, a satisfied smile on her face. “But we’re watching  _ Rush of Blood _ first.”

“Fine by me,” Beth said. 

Both of them turned to Chris, whose shoulders drooped when he saw the intensity of their stares. For a moment their combined gaze switched to Sam, and she took a bite of her sandwich before they could say anything to her. Hannah’s face seemed to soften, and she returned her scrutiny to Chris.

Beth’s gaze lingered a moment longer. Sam felt like she was being examined, but Beth’s lips quirked up a moment after Hannah turned away. But Sam could see something in her eyes, as if she wanted to ask something she didn’t have the right to ask. Before she could do anything, Hannah began to question Chris about Ashley, and Beth turned to join in. Sam let out a deep breath, feeling like she had just dodged a bullet. As the twins ribbed Chris goodnaturedly, she joined in. The confirmation she wanted could wait.


	3. february 3, 2015

 

Time passed strangely on the mountain. It felt like only an hour had passed since she was relaxing in the bath, but the phone in her pocket placed the time at a quarter til six the last time she had checked. Not that any dawn would break on them this deep in the mines.

The bright white light of her headlamp only made her more claustrophobic as she and Mike made their way down the small paths between the stalactites and stalagmites. The faint fog rising from the ground diffused both their lights, letting them see only a few feet in front of them. If they stumbled on any wendigos, the creatures would likely kill them before they had a chance to do anything.

“Watch it!” Mike hissed, grabbing her around the waist.

Sam huffed her thanks, looking at the short drop-off into a pool of black water. An ancient water wheel was just barely visible in the shadows of the cave, nestled against the wall.

“I really don’t want to go into that,” Sam told him, gesturing at the water.

“Tell me about it,” he said. “Maybe there’s a way around?”

Sam scanned the ground, spying a branch of their small path leading around the underground lake. She grabbed Mike’s hand, directing his flashlight beam to show the way. He held it in place as she skirted the small drop off, her shoes sliding a little on the wet stone. The stone gave way to gravel and sand, before dropping off into what looked like a hole.

“Mike...” she said, “is that what I think it is?”

“Shit,” Mike muttered. “Looks like a grave.”

The beam of his flashlight swept over it, highlighting what looked like human bones. Just as he moved it up towards the columns of rock, Sam caught the faintest glint in the hole. Steeling herself, she crouched down and reached for it. The faintest feeling of something shifting as she pulled it up made her shiver, and she tried not to think of what else was nestled in the shifting sediment.

It was a watch. The face was shattered, the hands stuck at half past nine. Sam flipped it over, unable to stop the gasp that escaped her as she read the inscription on the back.

“Oh god, Mike,” she said. “This is Beth’s. This is her watch!”

“What?” he said, leaning in to look at the inscription for himself. He turned back towards the grave, letting his flashlight linger on the white bones inside. “So she was buried here? By who?”

“Emily said earlier, oh god,” Sam said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Emily said that she found signs that Hannah and Beth had fallen into the mines. She said that she found a cross with Beth’s name on it and Beth’s head was sitting on a rock-”

“Her head?” Mike asked, sweeping his flashlight to both ends of the grave. Neither end held a skull, but closer to the wall a bit of wood stuck out of the ground.

“There was a cross here,” she said, pointing at it.

“So this is where she was buried?” Mike asked. “By who?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But who dug her up?”

The question seemed to shake off the sickening thrill of their discovery. Mike swung the flashlight to look at the walls and ceiling, assuring them both that there wasn’t something about to get the drop on them. Sam stepped on the rocks surrounding the grave, grabbing one of the stalactites for balance as she tried to see if there was another way around.

Past the columns of rock there was another landing, with what looked like a small camp set up on it. Sam craned her head to try and see if there was a way through, but the rock formations were too tightly packed. As her shoulders slumped dejectedly, she caught sight of a small ledge, dropping off into what looked like the same pool of water that she had almost fallen into. A post leaned haphazardly towards the water, as if some great force had torn whatever it was anchored to away.

“We should keep moving,” Mike insisted, interrupting her search. “We don’t know what else is down here with us.”

“There’s something over there,” Sam said as she climbed back to him.. “We need to check it out.”

“We need to find Josh and that key,” he replied.

“Trust me,”she agreed, “this place is giving me the creeps, but if there’s something there, something from Hannah? We need to know what happened to her down here, Mike.”

“Jesus...” Mike said, wiping a hand over his face. “Fine. We’ll go look, but we have to be quick, okay? I really don’t want to be down here longer than I have to.”

The rocks were just as slippery going up as they were coming down into the little alcove that housed Beth’s grave. As they reached the drop-off, Sam looked at the scattered pieces of wood that lay on the ground near it. Absently, she ran her hand over the worn wood. With a hiss, she pulled her hand away, the cold metal of a former chain sending a chill through her body. Careful not to touch the metal again, she sat down on the wooden ledge, her feet dangling above the water. Mike followed suit, before sliding into the water. His breath escaped him in a rush, and he wheezed for a moment before gesturing for her to join him.

“It’s okay,” he said, the fact belied by the way his teeth chattered. “Come on.”

“You sure?”

“I’m not dead yet.”

“Famous last words,” she muttered as she joined him. The water was cold, as she had expected, but the toe of her shoe bumped up against something on the bottom. “You sure there’s nothing else in here?”

“It’s just wood,” Mike replied. “Looks like there used to be a bridge here. Must have collapsed into the water.”

Staying close to the wall, she walked towards the small camp she had seen through the columns. Mike followed close behind, his teeth chattering just as loudly as hers. The water seemed to get colder with every step, and Sam was grateful when they finally reached a low section of the wall. Pulling herself up, Sam braced herself on one of the old posts and offered her hand to Mike. As he shook himself out and tried to rub some warmth back into his arms, she walked over to what revealed itself to be a pile of blankets and a file folder.

“What’d you find?” Mike asked.

“Looks like someone slept here,” she said, gesturing to the blankets. She reached out and picked up the file folder, flipping it open.

“Oh shit,” Mike said, coming and looking over her shoulder. “That looks like Hannah’s writing.”

Sam nodded, reading over the words that Hannah had scrawled on the backs of old papers. The entries became more and more distraught as they went on, as Hannah’s hopes of a rescue seemed to diminish. Reading the thirtieth entry, Sam felt the bile in her stomach rise as she realized what Hannah was saying.

“I’m sorry, Beth...” she said, reading the page to Mike. “I have no choice. It’s the only way I can survive anymore. If anyone finds this, I’m sorry. I had to. I had no choice.”

“What does that mean?” Mike asked.

Sam bit her lip, remembering what she had read in the old man’s notebook. Turning the last few pages, the last vestiges of Hannah seemed to slip away, her sentences losing coherence or even sense. The last page was a mess of black marks, the word hunger written over and over before being scratched out.

“Oh god, it makes sense,” she whispered, closing the folder.

“What makes sense?” Mike asked. “What did Hannah mean?”

“It was Hannah,” she said, turning to face him. “ _Hannah_ dug up Beth.”

“No, no, that’s ridiculous-”

“Mike-” she cut him off. “Michael, it has to be. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Beth died in the fall.”

“So? What does that have to do with this?”

“Hannah must have buried her,” Sam told him. “And then she was stuck down here for... for a month. She would have been _starving_ , and then-”

“I don’t believe any of this,” Mike said, turning away from her and walking back towards the water.

“She didn’t think anyone was looking for her, Mike,” Sam continued, her voice breaking on the words. “She got desperate, and she did what she had to do to survive. She didn’t _know_ -”

“Fuck!” Mike bit out, turning back to Sam. She watched as he took a few deep breaths, emotions skittering across his face. “So, when she...” he stopped, unable to say the words. “She’s one of _them_?”

“We need to find Josh,” Sam said, letting that stand as her answer. “We find Josh, and we get the hell out of here.”

“And Hannah?” Mike asked. “What about her?”

Sam swallowed, acid burning the back of her throat. “Just... hope we don’t see her.”

“This is fucking unreal,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I mean, _fuck_...”

Sam set the folder back on the ground, wiping her hands on her pants. Part of her wished that there was some way to take the small journal, Hannah’s last words, back with them. But to take them with them left the chance that they would be destroyed. The paper had felt like tissue paper in her hands, and Sam had no doubts that it would disintegrate in the water if she tried to bring it with her.

Fixing the words in her mind, Sam turned away from Hannah’s camp. Mike had a hand over his face, covering his eyes. She reached over and touched his shoulder, letting him lean into the contact for a moment. He shrugged her hand off after a minute, walking quietly to the ledge. Sam pretended to ignore the tear tracks through the grime on his face as she joined them.

Mike dropped off the ledge, grabbing her when she slipped on her own entry. The slip soaked her up to her shoulders, and a violent shudder ripped through her as she stood. Sam followed Mike as they walked to the other bridge posts, testing the bottom of the pool with every step. Every few feet she felt the edge of another board, and made sure to step carefully around them.

By the time they reached the other side, Sam had almost lost all feeling in her toes. Mike climbed up first, offering his hand as she clambered up. Both of them spent a moment shaking off the worst of the water and rubbing some warmth back into their chilled limbs. Looking around as she squeezed some water out of her pants, the only way forward she could see was a metal door.

“Looks like our way forward,” she said, going up to it.

Grabbing the metal handle, Sam pulled it down. The thud of the lock gave her a grim sense of satisfaction as she went to open it, only to find herself forced onto her back by a torrent of water. Something rolled past her head, and she couldn’t help but watch as it came to a stop a few feet past Mike. She jumped to her feet, a strangled scream escaping her mouth as she recognized the head of the old man who had warned them about the wendigos.

“Jesus, fuck,” Mike said, as he scrambled away from the decapitated head.

Sam turned away from it, and threw up what little there was in her stomach. Mike’s hand rested on the middle of her back as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She nodded to his unasked question, straightening and rubbing her hand on her pants. They stepped into the room that had been revealed, both grimacing at the body of the old man impaled on a meat hook.

“It’s... keeping them,” she said, stepping around the swinging feet. “Why?”

“Why else,” Mike said, letting his flashlight dance over the other hooks. They were blackened; whether from age or blood, Sam didn’t care to find out. “It eats them, eventually. Just needs a place to store it, I guess.”

“Like a fridge?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? Takes time to eat something, even for a wendigo.”

In the back of the room, Sam could just barely see the faint white of a pile of bones. Against her better judgement, she stepped closer to look at them. Most were splintered and cracked, with strange looking marks on them, as if from monstrous teeth. She shivered, more from revulsion than cold, and backed away from them. From the pile, there had to have been more than one person, but she wasn’t willing to count to see how many.

“Hey, I think I see something.”

Sam turned away from the bones. Mike was staring through a hole in a wooden wall. He motioned her over, and she looked through one of the other gaps. There seemed to be a bit of ambient light in the room beyond, just enough to give her the idea of a man’s shape walking around in a circle.

“No... no no... no no no...”

Sam shared a look of consideration with Mike, following him to the door. This one was markedly easier to open than the one before it, without any unwelcome surprises. Mike shone his light into the room, revealing Josh. Instead of looking at them, however, his gaze shifted around them, as if he were seeing something else.

“I don’t... I don’t take orders from you...” he mumbled as they walked closer. He jerked back when Mike reached a hand out towards him, stumbling closer to the walls. “I don’t take orders from you, you can’t tell me what to do...”

“Josh,” Sam said softly, her heart breaking at the lost look on his face. Before she could, Mike grabbed one of Josh’s arms, pulling him closer to them both.

“Josh? Buddy?” Mike asked. When he got no response, he looked at Sam in bewilderment. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He was on something, some sort of medication,” she said, tucking her own arms around her waist to stop herself from reaching for the marks on her back. “On his phone there were some messages from his doctor about stopping mid-course, and there was some paperwork with side effects. One of them was hallucinations. I don’t think he even knows we’re here.”

Josh’s head snapped to look at her as she talked, and she couldn’t help but wince at the blank way he looked at her. It was so different from the animated person she knew.

“Okay, okay,” Josh said, still staring blankly at her. “I trust you. I trust you.”

“Fuck, this is not the time for him to be tripping,” Mike said.

He slapped Josh, snapping his blank eyes away from her face. Sam flinched, but Josh seemed to come back to himself, blinking rapidly and focusing on them instead of whatever he had been seeing.

“Muh-Mike?” he asked.

“Josh! Hey, man,” Mike said, letting go of him. Josh looked between them, a hand coming up to rub his jaw.

“Don’t hit me... p-please,”

“You were deep in it man,” Mike said. “Full mental jacket.”

“I was scared you weren’t coming back,” Sam said. Josh blinked, seemingly surprised by her statement. “That we’d lost you like-” Sam stopped, what she read in the diary slamming into the forefront of her mind. “Josh, Hannah was down here for... weeks. A month, maybe? She dug Beth up-”

“Sam,” Mike cautioned.

“He needs to know, Mike.”

“How about after we get the fuck out of here, then?”

Sam nodded her acceptance. “Okay. Josh, do you have the key to the cable car?”

“Uh... yeah...” he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. “Here.”

“Thank you, Josh,” Sam said, taking it from him.

Josh grabbed her hand, his fingers almost as cold as her own.“I didn’t want to... to hurt anyone, Sam. I never wanted this to happen.”

“I know, Josh,” she said. “We’ll deal with all of this once we get out of here, okay?”

“I didn’t know,” he continued. “I didn’t know about the words, Sammy. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Her jaw tightened. Josh let go of her, his hands dropping like she had burned him. She caught Mike’s eye as he looked between them, obviously confused by their strange conversation. Sam shook her head. He nodded, letting the matter drop.

“See that over there?” she asked both of them as she scanned the cavern.

Mike squinted at the darkness and swung his flashlight in the direction she pointed. The yellow glow drowned out the pale moonlight she had spied. Sighing in exasperation, Sam covered the flashlight. Mike blinked, adjusting his eyes to the sudden darkness, and nodded when he saw it.

“That means that there’s a direct way out,” Sam said. “C’mon.”

“It’s almost straight up,” Mike said as they walked over to it. “There’s no way Josh is going to make it up there. Hell, I don’t think I can make it up there.”

“I can make it,” Sam said. “If you help me up to that ledge, I can go back and tell the others we're okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Mike said. “Good. How are we going to get out?”

“Back the way we came,” Sam said. “We’ll meet back up at the lodge.”

“Sam,” Josh said.

She turned towards him, her expression softening. “I’ll see you soon, Josh, I promise. Stay safe.”

“You too,” Mike said, kneeling down and cupping his hands together for her. “Seriously, Sam. I don’t want to have to come back down here to find you.”

Sam nodded, her eyes scanning the rock face for handholds as she stepped into his hands. He hoisted her up, and she clambered onto the ledge. As she surveyed the looked for handholds, she heard them walk off. Flexing her fingers, she reached for what looked like solid hand holds and began to pull herself up.

It was slow going, but every ten feet or so there were small outcroppings just large enough for her to stop and catch her breath. When she was halfway up, she began to see the first signs of snow. It settled into the cracks and crevices that she used as hand holds, freezing her fingers until she could barely feel them. She stuck them under her armpits during her small breaks, desperately trying to keep them warm. Not that it did much good. Even though she knew, objectively, that she was sweating, the heat it generated wasn’t enough to stop small bits of ice from forming on her wet clothes.

Pulling herself onto another ledge, Sam looked up, surprised when she saw that only a few feet remained in her climb. She flexed her fingers, mentally preparing for her final ascent. As much as she wanted to rush, the protests from her frozen muscles made her continue the same way as the rest of the climb. The snow on the lip of the hole was slippery, falling onto her shoulders as she scrabbled for a grip on the grass underneath.

Sam flopped onto her back after she pulled herself up, breathing heavily as she looked at the early morning sky.  No light peeked over the horizon, but the black of night was fading to navy. She took a few more deep breaths as a few heavy snowflakes settled into her hair. She was tired, her muscles protesting any movement that she wanted to make. A small rest in the snow wouldn’t hurt, especially after all the work she had done to escape the mines.

A chilling screech startled her, and Sam found herself on her feet. She shook the snow from her hair, her heart beating fast as the sound repeated itself. Almost of their own accord, her legs began to move, and she found herself jogging in the direction of the lodge. The movement jarred the lethargy that had threatened to overcome her, the shriek of the wendigo making her heart beat as fast as it had when she was climbing out of the mines.

“Oh, fuck,” Sam muttered, as she looked at a small pond that blocked her path. The rocks on either side were slippery with ice, leaving her only option to go forward the icy water.

She let herself down slowly, and found herself surprised when the water did not feel as cold as it had in the underground lake. Her toes, already numb from the first soaking, could barely tell the difference. When she was halfway across, another scream startled some birds from their roost in the trees. Sam froze, scanning for the monstrous creature as it’s horrible howl echoed around her. It didn't sound close, but from what she had read in the old man’s journal, that didn't matter. She trudged to the other side of the pond, her fingers scrabbling on the snow as she got out.

Rubbing her arms as she walked, Sam scanned for any signs that would let her know that she was getting closer to the lodge. As she turned a corner, she spied a run down building. Sam sat down on a ledge, reaching out with her numb legs for a foothold. The dirt under her collapsed, and she skidded down. A few small rocks cut into her palms as she tried to grab for something to stop her descent. Her legs collapsed under her when she hit the bottom, pitching her forward into the snow.

Sam groaned, pushing herself to her feet. Walking around the dilapidated building, she saw a deep depression in the snow, the black color within it in stark contrast to the white snow. She skirted around it, a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold wracking her body when the light from her headlamp made it shine red. Sam looked between the dilapidated building and the blood-soaked snow, and remembered the headless body she had seen hanging in the wendigo’s lair. She turned away and spat out bile, the final remnant of what remained in her stomach, coughing slightly at the acerbic aftertaste it left in her mouth.

A shriek, closer than what she had heard before, spurred her into another run. Ducking under a fallen branch, she saw the lodge a few hundred feet away. Dropping down another small rise, she spared a glance over her shoulder. In the distance she saw a group of birds take flight, their squawking joined by another unearthly wail. Sam hopped over a small gas tank, and slid to a stop in front of the door. The handle refused to turn for her, and she let out a strangled scream. She tugged on it, her frantic efforts rattling the door in it’s frame.

“Hey!” she shouted. “Come on, open up! Guys, come on! Are you in there? Let me in!”

“Sam?”

She turned around, her hands balled into fists. Mike looked at them, then met her eyes. He looked worse than he had when she had left him, a trio of gashes on his chest turning his white undershirt red. His eyes were slightly unfocused as well, the skin around the left one already starting to turn a mottled purple

“Oh god, you look terrible,” she said. He listed slightly to the side, and she reached out and grabbed his shoulder. Mike winced at the contact, and she let go as he righted himself.

“Gonna look worse if we stay out here,” he said. “Is the door locked?”

“No one’s answering,” she replied. “Chis and the others should be here, though.”

“We don’t really have time to wait for them to unlock the door,” Mike told her. “I think one of those things might have followed me out of the mines.”

“Shit,” Sam said.

She pressed her hand against the glass, trying to judge its thickness. Shaking her head, she grabbed a rock off of the ground and tossed it through. Most of the glass shattered, but a few small pieces still stuck in their frame, their points sharp enough to draw blood. Sam reached her arm through carefully, wincing when she angled her arm to grab the lock. As she pulled her arm back she looked at the nick, a part of her surprised at how little the cut seemed to bleed.

Mike opened the door, gesturing her in as he looked back over his shoulder, Sam shivered as she entered the lodge, the ambient temperature far warmer than the winter night. Mike closed the door behind him, and Sam blinked. Turning towards the door, she looked outside, not knowing what she hoped to see.

“Mike...” she said. “Where’s Josh?”

“It got him.”

“What?”

“It was in that lake,” he explained, looking past her at something only he could see. “It pulled me under... and, fuck, I don’t know. It went for him instead of me.”

Sam took a shuddering breath. Even though she wanted to, she stopped herself from reaching for the marks on her back.

“Fuck,” she muttered. “I promised...”

“I’m sorry,” Mike said. “But he would want us to keep moving, okay Sam?”

Nodding, Sam went for the lights and flipped them on. With a shake of his head, Mike turned them off again.

“Not good,” he said.

“The journal said that it didn’t matter if it was light-”

“Yeah, well I’d rather not take the chance.”

“Then what should we do?” Sam asked.

“Check the basement?” Mike replied, sounding unsure. “Might be someone left down there. We can hole up until dawn. It’s not much longer.”

“Wish it would come faster.”

Mike snorted as they walked down to the bottom floor. The cinema room was open again, but this time the projector was off, casting the room in dark shadows. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she looked around, her gaze darting back to the doors. They didn’t slam shut as Mike walked through behind her, and she let out a little sigh of relief. Mike looked at her strangely, but she shook her head slightly.

“How do you rate our chances of survival?” she asked, her voice strangely flat to her own ears.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” Mike said.

A screech cut off her reply as Chris rushed past them. He shouted something, but Sam’s eyes were drawn to the creatures behind Emily and Ashley. Emily pushed the Ashley as they got close to the door, almost sending her to the ground as one of the creatures scaled the wall behind them. Sam stood rooted to the ground as they both ran away, their words just as incomprehensible.

The only wendigo she had seen had been on fire. It had looked like a skeleton, barely human. These were different, what skin they had a sickly gray color, stretched in a mimicry of humanity across their frames.

It was surprising, then, to see the faint white marks on the wall-clinging wendigo's arm. Even with what the strange old man had told them, and the words Hannah had written, it had been hard to reconcile the monsters with human origins. But they had soul marks, which meant that, at one time, they had been human. The wall-clinging wendigo let out an ear-piercing shriek, startling her out of her thoughts.

“Oh shit,” she muttered, taking a few stuttering steps forward and pulling the door closed. The wendigo slammed against it, and she saw the faintest crack in the wood. Twisting the lock, Sam ran in the same direction as the others, her pulse thumping in her ears.

She slowed to a halt as she entered the main level. The metal sculpture Mrs. Washington had made clanked on it’s steel chain as the wendigo perched on it jerked its head towards her. Below, Sam heard the door shatter, and the echoing screams of the wendigos she had locked behind it.

“Don’t move,” Mike whispered. Sam glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes. He shook his head slightly, his eyes going to the wendigo. “Don’t move a fucking muscle.”

She wanted to scream at the impossible command. Her arms ached from her climb, and she could barely feel her toes in her waterlogged shoes. Biting the inside of her lip hard enough to draw blood, Sam stayed still as the wendigo scanned the room. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the two wendigos she had left in the cinema room crawl onto the main floor, one of them close enough that she could smell the fetid stink of its breath.

That seemed to grab the attention of the sculpture riding wendigo. It made its  way to the floor, before standing to its full height. Compared to the two she had seen in the cinema room, it was significantly larger, easily reaching seven feet. As the smaller wendigo leapt at it, something on the large wendigo’s arm caught Sam’s attention.

A butterfly tattoo. Stretched and warped on the emaciated frame, but still recognizable from the scrawled designs Hannah had sketched in her notebooks. Sam closed her eyes as the wendigo - Hannah - threw the smaller wendigo into the stairs, shattering them. In the same movement she tossed it at the fireplace.

The smell of rotten eggs, just barely noticeable over the stench of the wendigos, reached Sam’s nose as the beaten wendigo scuttled up the fireplace. It bared its teeth at the wendigo-that-had-been-Hannah, letting out a growl that Sam knew would haunt her nightmares. The Hannah-wendigo scuttled towards the fireplace, letting out an answering growl.

Sam looked back at Mike, who moved his head forward to the fireplace, before tilting it back and directing her gaze to the lightswitch. She shook her head slightly, trying to convey that she didn’t completely understand. Mike moved his finger slightly, pointing at a light without a lampshade.

“Bomb?” Sam mouthed at him.

Mike nodded, before raising an eyebrow at her. Closing her eyes, Sam took a deep breath and nodded. He began to creep towards the lightbulb, his eyes on the Hannah-wendigo’s back. The scarred wendigo that had challenged Hannah backed away as its compatriot snuck up behind her. When it jumped on her, she twisted and grabbed its neck, throwing it back against the wall and stunning it. The wind from its passing was enough to ruffle her hair, and Sam fought to keep still as it lay on the floor a few feet from her. It was up barely a second later, jumping up the wall to the second floor.

As she turned her attention back to the Hannah-wendigo, she saw the scarred wendigo leap. The two scuffled for a moment before the Hannah-wendigo slammed its head into the floor. She lifted it back up, letting out a wail as she ripped its head from its neck. The body collapsed, whatever animating it vanishing at the separation. The suddenness of its demise shocked Sam, and she took half a step back before freezing.

It was enough to draw the Hannah-wendigo’s attention. It dropped the body and head, stalking across the living room towards her. Sam forced herself into stillness, her legs protesting the awkward position she had been forced to remain in. The wendigo yowled before cocking its head, as if waiting for her to make a sound and give her position away. When she remained in place, it took a step forward, covering in one what would have taken a person three.

The sound of breaking glass saved her, the Hannah-wendigo turning towards Mike and hopping on one of the chairs. Out of the corner of her eye Sam saw Chris run out of the lodge, leaving the door open behind him. Instead of turning to look at Chris, the Hannah-wendigo seemed fixated on Mike. It crawled off the chair in a manner reminiscent of a cat, getting as close to Mike as it had been to her.

“Hey!” Sam shouted, hating herself as she did it.

She saw Mike’s eyes widen as the Hannah-wendigo turned away from him. Instead of looking at him, Sam kept her eyes forward, holding her breath as the Hannah-wendigo stopped just a few inches from where she stood. It screamed, spittle flying off of its fangs and landing on her cheek. Something behind her drew its attention, and it moved towards the door. Sam let out a breath, looking up just in time to see Emily run out the door.

Taking a deep breath, Sam ran up behind it, putting her back against one of the wooden supports to the second landing. The sickening visage of the Hannah-wendigo entered her peripheral vision, its fangs bared as it let out another cry. Beyond it she could see Mike moving closer to the door. He stopped when the Hannah-wendigo moved, his eyes watching something she couldn’t see.

As the Hannah-wendigo and the one she couldn’t see squared off again, Sam let out , and Sam let out the breath she had been holding. She craned her head slightly around the pillar, almost breaking her silence when she saw how close both of the monsters were to Mike. All it would take was one inopportune movement, and they would pounce on him. Sam shoved down all the thoughts that screamed for her to run for the door, and made her choice.

The floorboards squeaked under her sneakers as she moved to the wall. Sam pressed herself into the stone, unable to stop a small shiver that went down her spine as the Hannah-wendigo craned its head around the corner. The edges of its fangs stopped mere centimeters from her face, letting her see the scraps of meat stuck between them. Her heart raced as it screamed in her face. The smell of its breath, something between hot metal and rotting meat, made her want to hurl.

Finally, it moved away, walking towards the living room. When it moved far enough away that it couldn’t grab her, Sam turned and ran for the door. Mike stood just outside of it, motioning for her to come to him. The sound of shattering pottery and the wendigo’s yelp made her put on an extra burst of speed. As she reached for the lightswitch, she felt something sink into her back, dragging across her shoulder blades before it was torn away. Mike’s eyes widened at whatever was happening behind her, his hand reaching for her.

Sam flipped the switch, diving into Mike’s arms. He turned and wrapped his arms around her, his hands pushing her head into his chest. For a split instant Sam’s heart sank, before she was knocked off her feet. The shock wave from the explosion knocked them off of the porch and sent them skidding into the snow.

For a moment they stayed like that, Mike’s arms wrapped tightly around her. Then, as if he was reassuring himself that they were both alive, his grip tightened, almost squeezing the breath out of her. Sam returned the embrace, curling her fingers in the soggy denim of his jacket. Slowly, Mike released her, helping to her feet.

Sam swayed slightly, her eyes drawn to dawn sunlight above the lodge. Something burned behind her eyes, but Sam blinked it away, turning her eyes towards the burning building. She felt cold to her core, as if someone had scooped out all of her emotions. She had survived, but it felt like an empty victory with Josh’s death. Someone wrapped a blanket around her and pulled her towards a helicopter she hadn’t noticed landing. Sam shook her head at the questions that the person asked her, whatever they meant flying in one ear and out another.

Her rescuer took her arm slightly and sat her down on one of the seats. As he buckled her in, she saw another helicopter land and open its side door. Emily and Mike went towards it, their eyes fixed on their soulmates. Before she could watch any further, Ashley and Chris were bundled into her helicopter and the door was closed. Sam leaned her head back against the seat, closing her eyes to block the view of the soulmates in front of her. Her eyes continued to burn, but despite the urge, no tears fell.


	4. februrary 18, 2011

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plane interior is a combination of both [this](http://redlounge.in/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/NRI.jpg) and [this](http://cdn.luxedb.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Comluxs-Airbus-ACJ319-Corporate-Jet-1.jpg).
> 
> Also, flashback chapter!

Sam sighed as she relaxed in the seat. The warm leather made the airplane ride much more comfortable than any of her previous trips. Hannah had passed out beside her a few minutes into the flight, leaving her without someone to talk to. Sam would have followed her example, but the snuffling snores she made were enough to stave off sleep. Across the aisle Ashley and Chris were playing their card game, Josh officiating over any disputes. Josh caught her eye as Chris and Ashley drew new hands. He smirked, then, as if realizing what he had done, dropped his gaze to the small table.

Sam sighed, looking away from him to Beth and Emily, who had chosen seats near the front of the plane. Both of them had papers strewn across their tables, and from their low whispers, Sam assumed they were arguing about some upcoming academic competition. As Emily threw up her arm in annoyance, she caught sight of the soulmark across her forearm. The words were indistinguishable from this distance, but from what Emily had said, they belonged to Matt.

Turning slightly in her seat, she looked at the group of three clustered in the back. It had been a little over two months since the Halloween party that had revealed their last soulmate, but things still seemed strained between them. As she was looking at them, Mike saw her. He waved at her, and she groaned, sitting up in her chair. Hannah mumbled something in her sleep, but snuggled deeper into her chair as Sam placed her blanket over her.

“What’s up, Sam?” Matt asked as she came and perched on the arm of Mike’s seat.

“Nothing,” she replied. “Kind of the problem. Wish I had brought a book or something.”

“Join the club,” Jessica said. “My phone died, like, twenty minutes after takeoff, and my charger’s in my suitcase. You wouldn’t happen to-”

“Nope,” Sam said. “I thought I’d pass out like Hannah, but I keep getting distracted by the plane.”

“It’s insane, isn’t it? The Washingtons are stupidly rich,” Mike said. “I mean, who has their own plane to take them to their own mountain?”

“Kinda answered that one already, Mike,” Matt told him. Mike rolled his eyes at his soulmate, failing to escape the swat Matt gave him in retaliation. “But it was really cool of Josh to invite us.”

“Uh, Josh invited you muscleheads,” Jessica said. “Hannah invited me. And thank god for that. I don’t think I could spend a weekend with just you guys.”

“You’re stuck with us, babe,” Mike said flippantly. All of them winced, with Jessica’s eyes cutting to where Emily sat with Beth.

“Are things, you know, working out?” Sam asked hesitantly.

The three looked at one another, before shaking their heads. Matt opened his mouth to say something, but shut it with a glance at Jessica, who had pulled her feet up onto her seat. Sam looked up to where Emily sat, unsurprised when she turned to look at their little group. When Jessica looked down at her dead phone, Sam saw Emily’s face fall. It was a small thing, but Sam felt for her.

“I don’t think she really wants to talk about it,” Mike said. “I mean, she barely ever wants to spend time with any of us.”

“I just want to apologize,” Jessica said, her lips turning down as she pouted.

“What did your guys’ multiple soulmate seminar say to do?” Sam asked. “I mean, mine said that we shouldn’t expect it to be all romantic and-”

“Wait, you have more than one soulmate?” Mike interrupted.

“I mean, I haven’t met all of them,” Sam said, choosing her words carefully.

“Yeah, well it was only us and Josh in our seminar,” Matt said. “Mike, Jess, and I had already met at that point. I don’t think Josh hasn’t met any of his yet. Or, at least he hasn’t mentioned it.”

“It’s how we all became friends,” Mike said. “I mean, who better understands what’s waiting for him than us?”

“How many do you have?” Jessica asked. Mike kicked her shin lightly and she shrugged. “What? It’s not like it’s a crime to ask.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to tell,” Matt said.

“Four,” Sam said, cutting them off before it devolved into an argument.

“Seriously?” Jessica asked. Sam nodded.

“It’s kind of terrifying,” Sam said. “I mean, what if some of them have already met?”

“You mean like us?” Mike asked. He paused, his eyes cutting to Emily. His mouth dropped open a little as understanding washed over his face. “You think that’s why she’s being distant.”

“A little, yeah.”

“And now she’s stuck with us in an isolated ski lodge for a weekend,” Jessica said, flopping back in her seat. “Fucking perfect.”

“She knew you guys were going to be here,” Sam said. “That has to mean something, right?”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah, Beth made sure that she knew. She didn’t want it to be awkward.”

“Are you guys talking about me?”

Sam jumped off of Mike’s armrest, almost bashing the top of her head into Emily’s nose. The other three looked just as surprised at her arrival. Sam side-stepped around Emily, giving Mike a small shrug when he looked like she betrayed them. Before they could drag her into their conversation, she went back to her seat, dropping into it with a huff.

Sam looked at Hannah and the blanket she had given her when she had gone to talk to Mike. She could barely make out a halo of dark hair between the two blankets, but a snore convinced her that Hannah was alive, well, and still fast asleep. Sam leaned back, willing to let it stand as a lost cause, and closed her eyes . At this point, almost two hours into their flight, there was probably little use in trying to sleep, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t try. Not that the low sounds Hannah let out would let her anyway.

A tap on her shoulder made her jerk violently up, her foot connecting with Hannah’s leg. Hannah, to her credit, only mumbled before resuming her snoring.  Josh covered his mouth, but Sam could see the amused look he gave both of them. She rolled her eyes and tilted her head, silently asking him what he wanted. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder towards his seat and offered her his hand. Sam huffed and took it, letting herself be dragged over.

“You looked so bored, Sammy,” Josh said as he sank into the seat closest to the window.

Sam took the empty seat next to him, toeing off her shoes. “If your definition of bored means tired, then yes, I am very bored.”

“Hannah snores,” Josh said with a commiserating nod. “I don’t know how she and Beth share a room.”

“Must be a twin thing,” Sam said, leaning her shoulder against the seat. The position let her rest her cheek against the chair and look at Josh without getting a crick in her neck.

“Tell me about it. I’ve had to deal with their freakishness for years.”

“Oh, do tell,” Sam said. “I swear they’ve weaseled more embarrassing stories out of me than I ever wanted to tell. I need to get even.”

“They’ve got more on you than me, trust me,” Josh said. He looked to the side for a moment before returning his gaze to her face with a smile. “But I think I can help you out a little bit.”

Sam smiled as he launched into his story. After a few minutes she felt herself blinking tiredly, the sound of his voice lulling her towards sleep. Blinking quickly in an attempt to keep herself awake, Sam tried to grab onto the bits and pieces of the story that she could comprehend. He began chuckling as he talked about Beth and... a can of ravioli, if she was hearing correctly. The corners of her lips tilted up as he continued his story, his eyes never leaving hers for more than a few seconds.

Between one second and the next, Sam found her head resting on Josh’s shoulder. It wasn’t until she felt a sharp jolt that she really woke up, grabbing for whatever she could to keep herself in her seat. The blanket that had been tossed over them fell to the floor, her panicked yelp waking Josh. He grabbed onto her shoulders, pulling her halfway into his lap as their plane slowed to a halt. Sam let herself go limp in his arms, breathing deeply in an attempt to calm her racing heart.

“Not the worst way to wake up, I guess,” Josh said. Sam wiggled an arm out of his grasp and slapped his shoulder. The action only made him chuckle, and he used her awkward position to pull her completely into his lap.

“Joshua...” Sam growled.

The snap of a camera had them both looking up to where a bed-headed Hannah hung over the edge of the seats in front of them. Recognizing what she had just done, Sam attempted to lunge at her. Josh tightened his hold on her, pulling her so that she sat completely in his lap. Hannah laughed as Sam shoved her elbow into Josh’s gut.

“Aw, you two looked so cute together,” Hannah told her. Sam grunted, shifting in Josh’s lap to try and escape. “I liked the one where you two were sleeping better though.”

“Hannah, if you show anybody that-”

“Already did,” Hannah said with a smirk, pressing a button on her phone. Sam felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, and saw Josh’s phone light up from where it had fallen on the floor.

“Not as good as my picture of them!” Beth called back to her twin.

“I don’t know,” Chris said, leaning over the edge of Josh’s seat “Sam’s totally got a murder face going on in Hannah’s.”

“You guys are jerks,” Sam said, still scowling at Hannah. Chris dropped into his seat, cackling. She could just barely hear a sleepy Ashley ask what was going on before he began to fill her in.

“Your jerks, though,” Hannah replied. “Anyway, we totally have to upload these to the event page.”

“Hannah, come on,” Josh said. “There’ll be plenty of time later for photos.”

“Nope!” she said, popping the last syllable. “Already done. “

Josh’s arms loosened, falling to her waist instead. Rather than use the change to escape, Sam let herself relax slightly. Hannah’s face softened as she looked at them, before ducking down behind her seat. Sam sighed, leaning her head back against the seat. She could feel Josh’s grin against her cheek, and struggled to keep her offended expression in place.

“You know, I think I should be offended that you fell asleep during my story.”

“Maybe you just aren’t that good of a storyteller,” Sam said.

She leaned over slightly, ignoring a groan from Josh, and looked out the window at the runway. The sun was just sinking below the horizon, the last rays of sunlight making the glass of the airport look blood red. As she looked out, Josh moved from beneath her, grabbing the blanket from the floor and sitting in what had been her seat.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” he asked as she took his seat.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, continuing to stare out the window. “I guess it makes up for having to spend three hours on a plane.”

“Trust me, the lodge is worth the ride,” Josh said. “You’re going to love it.”

“It was really nice of your parents to let all of us come,” Sam said, turning back around in her seat.

“Sucks about the supervision though,” Josh joked. “I mean, can you imagine how much cooler it would be without them?”

“Oh yeah, right. That’d end well.”

“Maybe next year.”

“Already planning? What if this is the worst idea ever?”

“Can’t you trust me, Sammy?” Josh asked, fluttering his lashes.

Sam rolled her eyes and slapped his shoulder. “I bet you always say that right before you do something crazy.”

“He does,” Chris piped up from behind them. “Like that time in seventh grade-”

“I promise,” Josh said, cutting him off, “that this will be so cool that you will be begging us to host it again next year.”

“Fine,” Sam said, extending her pinky finger towards him.

“Really?” Josh asked, looking askance at her pinky. Sam held her ground, and he sighed before wrapping his own pinky around hers.

“That’s so sweet,” Hannah said, popping over the seat again.

Before either of them could do anything, she snapped a picture of them. She dropped back into her seat as Mr. Washington walked in from his cabin. Josh was halfway over her seat, but sat back down in his at a stern look from his father. The faintly murderous look on his face finally shook her out of her own annoyance, and Sam couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped her. He looked sullenly at her for a moment, before his lips quirked up into a smile as well.

“We’re here,” Mr. Washington said. “Grab your bags, and we’ll get our luggage before heading to the bus, okay kids?”

“Oh my god, Dad,” Beth grumbled.

Sam shook her head slightly at the embarrassment in Beth’s voice, standing up from her seat. To her surprise, Josh remained sitting, pulling his legs in tight against the seat so that she could get past.

“You planning on staying in the plane all weekend?” Sam asked. “Kind of puts a damper on your promise that this whole thing will be awesome.”

“Unlike you, I was here just a few weeks ago,” Josh said. “I just left some clothes and stuff at the lodge.”

“Oh, well aren’t you special,” she teased, squeezing past him.

“You know you love it, Sammy,” he said with a smirk.

Sam rolled her eyes as she wiggled past him and walked to her previous seat. Grabbing her bag, Sam watched as Matt, Mike, and Jessica walked to the front of the plane. Emily gave them a small smile as they passed, saying something Sam couldn’t hear to Jessica. Whatever it was, Jessica’s smile grew, and she hung back waiting for Beth and Emily to gather up their papers.

As she walked towards the front of the plane, Sam found herself cut off by Ashley and Chris. The two walked towards the front of the plane, talking about some new game that was set to come out in the spring. Josh caught her eye as she passed by his seat, tilting his head at their backs and rolling his eyes.

“Give it a rest,” she said under her breath. “Let them be what they want to be.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Josh said, standing up.

He tossed the blanket he had across his lap and slung his arm around her shoulders. Rather than shrug him off, Sam leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder.

“Everything okay, Sammy?”

“Just a little cold,” she said.

“In that case, I’m always available to warm you up,” Josh said.

Sam dug her elbow into his ribs, a smile across her face. Josh jostled her slightly with an answering grin on his face. Following Mr. and Mrs. Washington, they passed through customs easily enough before loading onto the bus. Sam extricated herself from under Josh’s arm and snuck on before Chris. She slid into the seat next to Ashley, smiling sweetly at Chris as he walked to the back of the bus. Josh gave her a sour look as he passed, and Sam fluttered her fingers at him with the same smile.

“What’s Josh’s problem?” Ashley asked.

“Who knows,” Sam said. “Maybe he just wanted to sit next to you and apologize some more.”

“Ugh, no,” Ashley grumbled. “Three months of groveling was plenty.”

“It’s Josh. He never does anything halfway.”

“I wish we had gotten the serenade on film,” Hannah said from across the aisle. “I mean, seriously, that was bad.”

“Oh fuck off, Hannah,” Josh called from the back. Sam turned to look at him, just in time to see the glare Mrs. Washington leveled at him. “Fine, sorry Hannah,” he said with a sigh, crossing his arms across his chest and returning his mother’s stare. “But you just wait until I become the next big thing in the musical world. You’ll regret the day you called my singing bad!”

Sam shook her head and sat back in her seat. She and Ashley shared a glance before breaking into laughter, soon joined by Hannah. Judging from the mischievous looks Hannah kept giving to the back of the bus, Sam had no doubt that Josh had turned his glare on them. As the bus continued down the winding Canadian roads, she saw the sun set below the mountains, leaving the headlights as their only illumination.

“It gets dark really quickly,” she said.

“It is winter,” Hannah said with a shrug. “Besides, we’ll probably be in the lodge most of the time. It’ll be plenty light in there.”

“It definitely feels like winter,” Ashley said. “I actually had to go and buy a winter coat for the first time.”

“This isn’t even cold,” Hannah told her. “When we came up here for winter break it was about ten degrees. Beth and I thought we were going to freeze to death in the cable car.”

“Wait, what?” Sam asked. “Why were you in a cable car?”

“It’s the only way to get to the lodge,” Beth said from a few seats behind them. “It is on top of a mountain after all.”

“I thought you were kidding,” Sam said. “I thought it was just another house for you guys.”

“I mean, it kind of is,” Hannah replied. “It’s our summer home, mostly.”

“And winter breaks,” Beth said. “Though we didn’t come here the year before last. Dad had a premiere.”

“ _Blood Monastery_ , right?” Sam asked.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, please don’t remind me,” Ashley said with a shiver. “I was freaked out for weeks after that movie.”

“What, did you think a monk was going to decapitate you with with rosary beads?” Sam teased. Ashley shoved her lightly with her shoulder, smiling despite herself.

“More like he would jump out of my closet,” she said.

“I still like the crucifixion scene,” Beth said. “Dad really got the lighting right with that one.”

“As much as I love to hear you praise my movies,” Mr. Washington said as the bus came to a stop, “I do believe we are here.”

“Bob, you’re embarrassing them,” Mrs. Washington said.

“If I can’t embarrass them now, when can I?”

“When we’re dead, Dad, god,” Beth said, shaking her head as she passed Sam.

It was the work of a couple minutes to get everyone and their bags settled outside of the bus. As it pulled away, Sam found herself at the back end of the group with Emily and Jess. Whatever they had talked about on the plane, it seemed to have thawed their relationship enough for friendly conversation. Sam nodded along with what they were saying, but found her eyes drawn to the woods that surrounded the path.

A few icicles hung on the snow laden branches, dragging them downward and casting ominous shadows on their group as they passed. The lights of the path made it impossible to see farther into the treeline, and Sam couldn’t help the shiver that went down her spine. Maybe it was the time of day, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching her.

“We’ll have to split into groups to go up,” Mr. Washington said as they neared the end of the path. “Four at a time, just to be safe. Hannah, Josh, you can go up on the first one-”

“Beth and Hannah can open it up,” Josh cut his father off. “It’s not like they haven’t before.”

“Fine, fine,” Mr. Washington conceded. “Hannah, Beth, you two are on the first ride. Any other takers?”

“Chris and Ash should go with them,” Emily piped up. “We,” she gestured to Mike, Matt, and Jess, “kind of wanted to ride up together.”

“Fine by me,” Hannah said. “Chris, Ashley, you up for it?”

Chris looked at Josh, who grinned and nodded. “Yeah, sure, sounds good.”

“If it gets me out of the dark, yes, please,” Ashley agreed.

Everyone began to pile into the cable car station, the chill in the air sneaking through even the warmest jackets. As she waited for everyone to cram in, something caught her eye near the edge of the small landing. Dropping her bag inside the station, Sam wandered over to it and bent down to pick it up. The bits of red plastic that clung to a metal cap made it easy for her to recognize; her dad had made sure that she was familiar with all types of guns when she was younger, and shotgun shells were one of the more memorable.

“What in the world?” she said, mostly to herself as she picked it up.

Standing and brushing the snow from her pants, Sam took a few steps closer to the edge of the forest. At the very edge, where the brush threatened to spill over, there were two deep depressions in the snow. In the middle of them the snow was almost scraped away from the ground, revealing the dead grass beneath it. Sam frowned, playing with the shotgun shell in her pocket. Leaning slightly over the brush, she could just barely see what looked like scratches in the bark of nearby trees.

A birdlike trill startled her, and Sam windmilled her arms in an attempt to stay upright. A pair of arms wrapped around her midsection, pulling her back against a decidedly male chest. Shoving her elbow back into the person’s abdomen, Sam felt a huff of warm air tickle her ear. The arms released her, and she turned around, her hands balling into fists.

“Fuck Sammy, remind me not to do you a favor,” Josh wheezed.

“Oh my god, Josh, I’m so sorry,” Sam said, reaching out towards him.

Josh smirked at her hand, and, before she could do anything, grabbed it and pulled her towards him. The problem with his plan became immediately apparent to both of them as Sam collided with him. They hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, and Sam saw the shotgun shell that had been in her pocket tumble out into the snow. Josh laughed as she tried to get to her feet, grabbing her arm and pulling her back down next to him.

“You’re an ass,” she said with a chuckle.

“I have been told by many fine ladies that I do have a remarkable one,” he shot back with a grin. “What were you doing over here anyway? It’s warmer in the station.”

“I thought I saw something,” Sam told him. Reaching over him, she grabbed the shotgun shell out of the snow and held it above his face for inspection. “Maybe a hunter was using it or something.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Josh said. “They must have wandered this way by accident.”

“What would they even hunt up here?”

“There’s always deer,” he said. “Maybe they wanted to try and nab a bear or something.”

“There are bears up here?” Sam asked.

“They’re mostly hibernating right now,” Josh said, sitting up. “It’s not really sporting to go after them, but people do.”

“That’s awful,” she said as he offered her a hand up. “I mean, they’re just trying to live like anyone else.”

“Way of the world,” he said. “But Mom doesn’t really like people hunting on the mountain.”

“Really?”

“I think she just likes the idea that we can head out and do stuff during the day without worrying about hunters.”

“It’s still really cool,” Sam said, putting the shell back in her pocket. “And, I mean, this will be a pretty cool souvenir at least.”

“You call a shotgun shell a souvenir?”

“Hey, at least I’ll always remember this trip.”

“With a shotgun shell,” Josh repeated slowly. Sam shook her head, smiling at his confusion.

“Sorry it doesn’t live up to your standards.”

“They are pretty hard to match,” he said, taking a few steps backward towards the cable car station. “Anyway, since we’re alone I have a question to ask you.”

“Oh really?” Sam asked, her heart beating a little faster.

“It’s more of an idea that I could use your help with,” Josh corrected himself. Sam struggled to keep her intrigued look on her face. From the grin he gave her, she supposed she had succeeded.

“I thought Chris was your go-to guy for trouble,”she said as he led her closer to the station.

“Trouble?” Josh said, holding a hand to his chest in mock offense. “My dearest Sammy, I am an angel sent here from the heavens to bring light and joy-”

“Pull the other one, jackass,” Sam said, chuckling at his antics. “What are you planning?”

“Okay, so I had an idea for how to prank Hannah and Beth for those pics they took,” Josh explained. “But since they involved you, I thought you might want in on the revenge.”

Sam pondered for a moment, before rolling her eyes and giving him a nod. “What’ve got in mind?”

“When you guys were talking about _Blood Monastery_ on the bus, it gave me the perfect idea,” he said, leading her over to a bench. “Dad let us be on set for a couple of days while it was filming, and I got to hang out with one of the guys who set up the scene after the crucifixion.”

“We are not crucifying your sisters, Josh.”

“Give me a little credit Sammy,” he said as she sat down next to him. “I’m not that crazy.”

“You’re the one who brought up one of the bloodiest scenes in the movie.”

“Exactly. The _bloodiest_ scene.”

“Okay, you’ve lost me,” Sam admitted. “How does that relate to your revenge prank?”

“Dad wanted to use practical effects for the movie,” Josh explained. “So the art department had to make gallons of fake blood for different scenes. They taught me how they made it the day I followed them around.”

“And...?” she asked, leaning back on the bench. “I’m still not completely sure where you’re going with this.”

“Hannah has her own shower,” he said. “If we make a little bit of fake blood, I can baggy it and put it inside the showerhead. Poke a few holes, and when the water hits she’ll freak out.”

“Is it safe?”

“Yeah, it’s mostly corn syrup. The art department added some mint flavoring for the actors because they had to get it in their mouths, but I don’t think we have anything like that in the lodge kitchen.”

“And Beth?” she said. “What about her?”

“She’s a ridiculously deep sleeper. I figure I’ll take whatever’s left and stick in a bowl, wait until she’s asleep, and stick her hand in it.”

“They’re going to be so pissed,” Sam said. “But if you had all of this planned, why do you need my help?”

“C’mon Sammy, what’s the fun of a prank without a co-conspirator?”

“Well, when they’re threatening me, I’m going to tell them it was all your idea.”

“Betraying me already?” Josh said. “I expected more from you.”

“I’ll just play up the fact that you’re a bad influence,” Sam said, leaning closer to him. As his eyes widened, she smirked and flicked his nose with a finger. “So, I’m guessing we’ll sneak down to your kitchens after everyone else is asleep?”

“Yeah,” he said. “We’re not going to make a lot, so it shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.”

“We are going to get so much shit for this.”

“Correction, I will be getting so much shit for this.”

“Such a gentleman,” Sam teased.

The sound of a branch breaking made both of them freeze. Sam turned slowly, reaching for Josh’s hand as she did. It was slightly warmer than her own, and he gave it a reassuring squeeze. The treeline looked darker from under the lights, the barren branches looking like claws in the shadows.

As she peered from their seats, Sam saw something shine in the undergrowth. The overhead light reflected white off of a pair of eyes, the rest of the animal hidden in the gloom. From where the eyes rested, she guessed it was almost twice as tall as Josh, it’s head even with the lowest branches of the trees.

They vanished as she blinked, leaving the underbrush dark. Sam shivered, the hair on the back of her neck standing up even though nothing was there. When Josh stood, pulling her hand with him, she followed, her eyes still searching the treeline.

“It was probably an elk,” Josh said. His words sounded uncertain, even to her.

“Really? I didn’t think they got that close to people.”

“It’s not like there are a lot of hunters here,” he said. “But we should probably head inside. I don’t want to be around if it decides to be friendly.”

“Sounds good to me,” Sam agreed. “I’m getting kind of chilled.”

Josh didn’t seem to want to let go of her hand, and Sam couldn’t help but feel a little happy about it. It only lasted until the door to the cable car station closed behind them and he dropped it in favor of crossing his arms in front of his chest. She knew it didn’t mean anything, after all. It was easy enough to turn the smile that had crept across her face to Emily as she and her soulmates climbed aboard the cable car.

“Don’t think I didn’t see that look, Joshua, ” Mrs. Washington said as they watched the cable car ascend the mountain. “What are you planning?”

Josh’s shoulders slumped, and he sighed. “It’s nothing, Mom.”

“Mhh-hmm,” she said, looking to Sam with a raised eyebrow. Sam ducked her head and shifted uneasily from foot to foot. “Is this something to do with what you said to Hannah on the bus?”

“It’s just a little fun,” Josh said.

Mrs. Washington crossed her arms, but as Sam looked up she caught a hint of laughter in her expression. “What did they do this time?”

“They took some photos of us when we were sleeping,” Sam cut in. Josh looked up in surprise, and Sam shrugged him off. “Then they posted them even though we asked them not to.”

“I’m sure that we can get Hannah and Beth to remove them-”

“Mom, c’mon, seriously?” Josh said, a slight whine creeping into his voice. “It’s nothing serious, I promise.”

“Really?” she asked. “Because if it’s anything like the dryer incident-”

“You will never let that go, will you?”

“Oh, I’ll tell that story at your wedding some day,” Mrs. Washington promised, her eyes cutting to Sam. “But is this really worth starting another prank war over?”

“Did I hear prank war?” Mr. Washington said, walking out of the control room. “What’s Josh cooking up this time?”

“Don’t encourage him, Bob.”

“And ruin his budding artistic genius?” he said, walking past Sam to put an arm around his wife’s waist.

“His ‘ _budding artistic genius’_ ,” Mrs. Washington quoted sarcastically, “cost us a new dryer.”

“Mels-”

“Don’t Mels me,” she said, even as she leaned into him. “You’re not the one who’s going to have to deal with two hysterical girls.”

“We were just going to make a little fake blood,” Sam said.

“Folding already, Sammy?” Josh asked. “I thought you would last longer before giving me up.”

“Hannah and Beth are completely different from your mom and dad.”

“Fake blood?” Mr. Washington asked. “Planning on pulling a _Carrie_?”

“What, and hope one of them won’t kill me with murderous superpowers?” Josh said.

“I’d think we’d know if they had those,” Mrs. Washington said. She paused, looking at Mr. Washington and shaking her head fondly. “Fine, fine. On your heads be it.”

He smiled and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’m pretty sure we have everything in the pantry,” he told them. “Just clean up after yourselves, okay?”

“Are your parents for real?” Sam leaned over and whispered.

“It’s kind of a family tradition,” Josh replied. “Pranking shows our love.”

“Consider this a welcome to the family,” Mr. Washington said. Mrs. Washington looked at him warningly, and he rested his chin on her head. “She’s already around enough, Mels,” he said. “I almost thought I had forgotten a daughter.”

Josh rolled his eyes at his dad’s antics. “So, we’re good?”

“Tell you what, I’ll even give you some trade secrets-”

“Mint?” Sam asked. When Mr. Washington looked at her, she tilted her head towards Josh. “We were talking about it outside.”

“Sammy and I have it all planned out, Dad,” Josh said. “We’ve got this.”

“Totally,” Sam said, shoving him lightly with her shoulder. “It’ll be fun.”

“You say that...” Mrs. Washington said warningly, cutting herself off with a shake of her head. “I’ve already washed my hands of this. Do what you want.”

“Car’s here,” Mr. Washington said. “Sam, do you need any help with your bags?”

“I’m good, thanks,” she replied. “I only brought the one, and it’s pretty light.”

Walking over to where she dropped her bag, Sam saw Josh saying something to his parents out of the corner of her eye. Whatever it was, it was enough for Mr. Washington to look like he was apologizing. Sam ignored it and hoisted her track bag over her shoulder. The cable car creaked into the station, swinging lightly on its cable. Josh opened the door for her, bowing magnanimously as she stepped in. She shook her head at his antics and took a seat as the Washingtons entered.

The car started with a jerk, and Sam couldn’t help but look out the window as they began to climb the mountain. While Josh and his parents talked, Sam let her eyes wander over the landscape, taking in the view. From above the mountain looked like a winter paradise, the moonlight reflecting off of the snow-laden trees.

Something moving across the treeline caught her attention, and she almost pressed her nose against the glass to get a better view of it. It looked small, but everything did from the cable car. Just as she decided to point it out to Josh, it vanished. Scanning the trees, she didn’t see it again. The sudden disappearance made a chill run up her spine, and Sam rubbed her arms to try and get rid of it.

“You okay, Sammy?” Josh asked.

“Fine,” she said. “Just thought I saw something, that’s all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sam has no idea how close she came to being a wendigo snack four years early.


	5. february 3, 2015 / february 6, 2015

They started to separate all of them when the helicopters touched down. Sam let them pull her from the helicopter, leaving the blanket she had been wrapped in on the seat. She vaguely heard Ashley and Chris arguing with the rescue workers, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. As the man who helped her off the helicopter led her towards the station doors, Sam caught Mike’s eyes. He looked panicked, his arms tight around Jessica, who looked like she was about to fall over without them. Before she could see the outcome, she was through the doors.

It was strangely quiet inside the station. Most of the officers just stared as she was escorted by them, their eyes flinty as they looked her over. Sam stopped, looking over the frozen room. The youngest officer flinched as she met his gaze, his eyes falling to the floor. One of the other officers cleared their throat, and the young officer straightened his shoulders and met her eyes for a moment before fixing them somewhere past her shoulder. The rescue worker grabbed her arm, trying to move her forward. Sam tugged it out of his grasp, but allowed him to lead her again.

One of the officers sneered as she walked past, the expression gone when Sam turned back to look at him. She narrowed her eyes at him as she was urged forward again. His hand, which had been resting on his desk, slid off into his lap. The officer across from him leaned over and put their hand where his had been, shaking her head slightly. The corner of his lip twitched in disgust, but he put it back as she was led into a room marked _Interview_.

There were two chairs facing opposite on either side of a table. The rescue worker gestured for her to take the one on the opposite side of the room, and Sam forced herself to walk over and sink into it. When her shoulder hit the back of it, she hissed in pain and leaned forward. Rather than do anything to help her, the rescue worker did nothing. Angered by the way he treated her, Sam channeled her rage into a menacing smile. His frightened expression gave her a thrill of satisfaction, and she sat up a little straighter in her chair.

She flinched when he closed the door, the sound of the lock clicking echoing in the small room. Sam let her eyes wander around it, taking note of the two-way mirror on the wall. The light was just dim enough that she could see the two people on the other side. Her mouth twisted as her eyes flicked to the tripod holding a camcorder across from her. It was only the years she had spent alongside... Sam glared at the steady red light, shoving the thoughts about Hannah, Beth, and Josh into a box in the corner of her mind.

It only took a few minutes of her steady gaze for the door to open and admit a pair of officers. Before they closed the door behind, she caught the tail end of what sounded like Mike arguing with an officer. One of the two officers who walked in glanced back at the disturbance Mike was causing, something like fear crossing his features before he pulled the door shut.

The female officer took the seat across from Sam, while the man stood at the door, his hands resting on his belt. Sam said nothing as the officer pretended to turn on the camcorder, her eyes still on the officer at the door. The scratches on her back itched, the skin around them pulling as she crossed her arms over her chest. A violent shiver made her head start to pound, everything whiting out for a moment while she tried to get her bearings.

“Samantha-”

“Who told you that?” Sam asked, cutting her off.

The officer looked taken aback by her interruption. “You did, Samantha. When you were picked up by the rescue team.”

“It’s Sam,” Sam said with a shake of her head. “I don’t go by Samantha.”

“Sam,” the officer repeated, making a note on her steno pad. Sam blinked in confusion at its appearance, but let it go as a shiver wracked her body. “I’m Detective Sergeant Annie Cline. I don’t know if you remember me from last year?”

“Should I?”

“I was in charge of the search and rescue operation for Hannah and Beth Washington,” she said. “I was in charge of the interviews after that incident.”

“I don’t...” Sam stopped, her forehead crinkling.

“That’s all right,” Annie said. “I’m more interested in hearing about what happened to you last night on Blackwood Pines.”

Sam looked at the camera next to Detective Annie’s shoulder, before sliding her gaze to the woman. The silence stretched on between them for a minute as Sam debated her options silently. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Annie’s partner tapping on his belt in a steady rhythm. The tapping stopped as she looked at him, his knuckles turning white as he instead gripped it tightly.  

“Okay,” Sam said, looking back to Annie. She coughed, her shoulders hunching involuntarily as she tried to catch her breath.

“What were you doing up there last night?” Annie asked after Sam had caught her breath.

“Josh invited us. He said he wanted to move past what happened last year.”

“Joshua Washington?”

“Yeah?” Sam said, letting her confusion color her words. “He said he wanted to forget last year. To move forward.”

“You said that already,” Annie said.

Sam shrugged, not understanding what the other woman said. The detective looked to her partner, who shook his head slightly. Sam trembled, her fingers pulling the zipper of her jacket open as they had their silent conversation. The wet fabric of the jacket stuck to her t-shirt, before its weight let it fall away from her body. Sam stuck her hands under where they had been, barely feeling her fingers as they hooked into her soaked shirt.

“So Joshua Washington invited you up to Blackwood Pines,” Annie said, picking up her pen again. “What happened when you arrived?”

“Normal stuff,” Sam told her. “Everybody kind of drifted apart after... after last year. We said hi, stuff like that.”

Annie nodded, taking a note on her pad. “Your friend, Emily, said there was a maniac on the mountain when she contacted the park service. Can you tell me anything about that?”

“It was Josh,” Sam said. Annie paused and looked up at the biting tone of her words.

“Joshua Washington was the maniac?”

“It was his idea of a sick joke. A prank to get back at everybody for last year.”

“According to the interviews from last year, Beth ran into the forest after Hannah overreacted to a prank,” Annie said.  “You’re saying Joshua was trying to... get even?”

“I don’t know.”

“So Joshua was dressed up as this maniac,” Annie said. “What happened next?”

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I was in the bath. I thought they had stolen my clothes as a prank-”

“They?” the detective interrupted her.

“Chris and Josh,” Sam said with a shrug. Her jacket slipped off her shoulders slightly, but she didn’t try and fix it. “Or maybe Emily or Mike. It was the kind of stuff we used to do.”

“So Joshua’s prank wasn’t abnormal?”

“He took it way too far,” Sam said, leaning over the table slightly. To her muted surprise, Annie backed away. Sam sat back, her eyes going to the other officer. The hand farthest from her had gone to rest on the holster of his gun. When her back hit the chair, it went back to his belt. Sam bit the inside of her lip, a dull radiating pain radiating from where the metal chair touched the scratches on her back. She hunched forward in an effort to keep the metal away from them, her lips curling in a snarl of pain at the motion.

“What did he do, Sam?” Annie asked, ignoring the obvious discomfort she was in. “How did he take it too far?”

“He chased me,” Sam said, “when I was looking for my clothes. He had this mask on and something that looked like a fire extinguisher. And he-”

Sam stopped, the anger that she had felt at reliving the events draining out of her. She took a shallow breath, barely aware of the detective asking if she was okay. As Annie reached out towards her, her sleeve riding up her arm, Sam caught sight of the words scrawled along the inside of her wrist. _What can I do for you, ma’am_ , was clearly visible in thick black as the arm of her jacket rode up. Sam bit the inside of her cheek to stop herself from untangling her fingers from her t-shirt. She was unsuccessful, but she stopped them from going to her back and instead rested them on the table.

“He chased me,” Sam said, ignoring the concerned look Annie was giving her. “I ran into the basement, he followed me. Then I fell into the old lodge, and I hid.”

“Did he do anything to you?”

“ _What_? No,” she said, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t have, either. It was all some sort game to him, but he never wanted to hurt anyone. He wouldn’t have tried to hurt me.”

“You sound sure of that,” Annie said. “Why?”

“I thought we were close, after his sisters...” Sam paused, another shiver making her hands shake on the table. The image of Hannah, twisted and distorted until she was unrecognizable but for her tattoo, sprung to the forefront of Sam’s mind. She shoved it away, taking a deep breath and focusing on the camera rather than the images playing on repeat in her head. “After Hannah and Beth disappeared, he’d come and talk to me. He said I was the only one who understood him. I thought... I thought we had a connection.”

“Were you two...” Annie asked, trailing off. She lifted her arm slightly, drawing attention to the mark written on it.

Sam felt her lips twist into a cruel smirk. “Apparently not.”

“Are you sure? There are counselors-”

“I said we weren’t.”

“Okay,” Annie said, backing off from the question. She looked down at her pad, her lips pursing as she regrouped her line of questioning. “So after you hid from Joshua, what happened?”

“There were some vents,” Sam said, skipping over her meltdown. “I climbed through them for a bit, and then I ended up in this workshop.”

“You didn’t try and go back into the lodge?”

“I thought there was a maniac after me. I wasn’t going to go somewhere I knew he was.”

Annie nodded and wrote something on her pad. Sam closed her eyes for a moment, taking a few deep breaths. Her hands trembled on the table, and she moved them to her lap rather than let the detective see her weakness. Her head slumped forward slightly, and Sam forced away the exhaustion that was creeping up on her. As she opened her eyes again, she noticed that the officer by the door had taken a step closer to the table.

“Samantha, are you all right?”

The words took a few minutes to process, but Sam nodded. Annie marked something down on her pad, her eyes meeting Sam’s as she did.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“That’s understandable,” Annie said. “What happened after you left the workshop?”

“I looked around it first,” Sam corrected her. “I found some medical records-”

“And Joshua’s phone, with a conversation from his doctor?” Annie asked. “Don’t worry, I have it written down.”

“Um... Yeah,” Sam said, blinking away her confusion. “I found Mike, and he had been in some tunnels that connected to this old sanitorium or something on the mountain. He said that Jess was dead, and then everything just started happening really quickly.”

“It’s okay, Sam. Can you tell us what happened at the lodge? With the fire?”

Sam froze, her heart stuttering in fear. The small shivers that had been running down her arms even stopped. She let out a breath and looked away from the detective, focusing instead on the red light of the camcorder.

“Sam, if something happened in the lodge, if there’s something that you need to tell us...”

“The fireplace,” Sam said. “The pipe broke, and there was this smell like rotten eggs. And we ran outside. Something must have sparked, or something, because there was this huge fireball and the house was burning.”

“How did the pipe break?”

“It just broke,” Sam said, turning to stare defiantly back at Annie.

“There were three other bodies that have been recovered from the lodge, Sam,” Annie said. “All of them unrecognizable because of the severe damage from the fire. Were there other people in the lodge with you?”

“No.”

“The bodies we found,” Annie said, continuing on despite the answer. “They were... strange.”

Sam shrugged, her jacket falling down her shoulders some more. Rather than pull it back up, she pulled her arms out of it, letting it fall between her and the back of the chair. It pulled against the scratches on her back, but she barely felt it past the relief of having it off.

“They didn’t look human,” her partner chimed in. Sam looked at him, and he continued, “Kind of freakish-”

“Girard,” Annie said warningly.

He tilted his head in acknowledgement, his eyes meeting Sam’s for the first time. They narrowed suspiciously as she continued to stare at him. Sam broke their staring contest, turning back towards the Annie and the camcorder. The corners of Annie’s mouth were turned down as her eyes flicked to her notes. When she looked back at Sam it was gone, returning to the curious one that she had worn throughout the interview.

“You’ve said that Joshua Washington was with you at the lodge?”

“Yes. He invited us.”

“He wasn’t with your group when you were picked up by the park service. Do you have any idea of where he might be?”

“You won’t find him,” Sam said. Annie looked up sharply at the words.

“Did something happen to Joshua, Sam?”

“Mike said...” Sam trailed off, not wanting to think about it.

“What did Mike say? Did he do something to Joshua?”

“No, no... he said _it_... He said Josh was dead.”

“Was it an accident?” Annie pushed. “If Joshua’s prank went too far and you all thought something was wrong-”

“I wasn’t there,” Sam told her. “I had to go back to the lodge, to tell everyone that we were okay. Mike said _it_ got him when they were coming back, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.”

“What is it?” Annie asked.

There was something in her eyes that made Sam clam up. The sound of a commotion, muffled through the door, drew their attention away from her and the unanswered question. Girard turned away from them and cracked open the door. He swore under his breath and shut it.

“Paramedics are here,” he said to Annie as he turned towards them. “They’re going to take them.”

“Shit,” Annie swore under her breath. “Can we stall them? We need to make sure-”

“They already had one of the girls on a stretcher. We’ve got a minute, maybe two.”

Sam looked between the two of them, before focusing on Annie. As if drawn by her attention, the detective met her eyes. Sam gave her a tired smile, a little of her anger and confusion seeping into the expression. The unanswered question still hung between them, and Sam had an idea of what they wanted from it.

“You need to listen to me,” she said, catching Girard’s attention as well. “I don’t care if you believe me or not, because you will. You need to go down to the mines.”

Annie recoiled slightly. Her horrified expression gave Sam the confirmation that she needed. They knew what creatures haunted Blackwood Pines.

“What’s in the mines, Sam?” Girard pushed, stepping towards the table. Annie looked annoyed at his questioning, but she nodded at Sam to answer him.

Sam felt her smile turn into a cruel smirk. “I’ve seen what’s down there,” she told them. “And I’d give _anything_ to unsee it.”

The door opened as Girard began to ask her another question, admitting two paramedics. They looked at the two officers, something like disgust passing over the face of the one closer to Sam. He set his bag on the table, the noise from it dropping making Annie jump slightly in her seat. The paramedic gave the detective a frosty glare before kneeling in front of Sam.

“My name’s Nathan,” he told her. “I’m a paramedic for the Elkwood Memorial Hospital. Can you tell me your name please?”

“Her name’s-” Annie began.

“Ma’am, I wasn’t asking you,” Nathan said. “Al, get them out of here.”

Sam watched as Annie got up, grabbing the camcorder off of the tripod as she did. She walked past Girard, laying a hand on his shoulder when he looked unwilling to leave. Under the other paramedic, Al’s, gaze, he left, muttering incomprehensible words under his breath. Al left the door open behind them, and Sam caught sight of Mike being loaded onto a backboard.

“Ma’am, I need your name,” Nathan repeated. Sam turned to look at him, her eyes narrowing at the concerned look on his face.

“Sam,” she said.

“Sam, okay,” Nathan said with a nod. “Sam, I need to check your vitals. Can I touch you?”

She nodded, and he placed a hand around her wrist. He pulled away almost as soon as he touched her skin, his eyes going to her face. Sam tilted her head, confused at his reaction.

“How long were you outside for tonight?” he asked, turning to grab something from his bag.

“Awhile?” Sam said. “Maybe a couple hours?”

“I can see that your clothes are wet. Did you fall into some water?”

Sam nodded.

“Can you feel my hand on your wrist?” he said as he turned back towards her, a roll of gauze in his hand.

“Yes.”

“I’m going to press my fingers against yours, okay Sam?” Nathan said. “Tell me when you can feel them.”

Sam waited as he stared at her face, before flinching slightly as she felt his fingers pinching hers. She tried to drag her hand out of his, but he kept ahold of it. With his free hand he began to wrap her fingers in gauze, taking care to make sure that there was padding between each of them. There was a low droning noise that Sam couldn’t make out as she watched him do the same with her other hand.

“What the fuck?”

The surprised words from Al made Sam turn towards him. She frowned, confused as to how he had gotten from the door to her side without her notice. Nathan looked up at his partner as he tied off the bandage.

“We don’t have time to worry about small things, Al,” Nathan said, letting her hand drop back into her lap. He stood and moved to her other side, dropping the roll of gauze on the metal table. “She’s becoming unresponsive, and if she really was outside for a couple hours - Jesus fucking Christ!”

Sam turned her head towards him. The look of shock on his face surprised her even more than his exclamation.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. The words felt strange as they left her mouth, as if she had a wad of cotton under her tongue.

The question seemed to snap Nathan back into action, and he motioned for Al to grab something.

“Did something scratch you?” he asked. Sam nodded as Al handed something to him. Nathan tore it open, revealing a large gauze pad. He pressed it to her back, ignoring Sam’s hiss of pain.

“I’ll go grab a backboard,” Al said.

“Sam, I need you to stay with me, okay?” Nathan said as he pressed the pad against her back. “Can you tell me what scratched you?”

She shook her head. Nathan grimaced, his eyes darting from her face to the open door. Sam looked away, her head sinking forward until it was even with the table. The move made her grimace, but the pain from her back was more bearable in this position.

“Sam, I need you to say something.”

“I’m tired,” she mumbled, her eyes closing.

“I know, Sam. I just need you to stay awake for a little bit longer, okay?” Nathan told her. “Can you do that for me?”

Sam tried to form the words, but couldn’t. As she tried again, she was aware of being moved and placed on a flat surface. A high pitched whine made her want to cover her ears, but something against her wrists stopped her. Someone pulled at her eyelid, lifting it up and shining a bright light into her eye.

“Pupillary response is good. Sam, can you hear me?”

She wasn’t sure if she said something, but the person did the same with her other eye. When they let her eyelid shut, Sam forced herself to open both of her eyes, straining with the effort. A woman in a labcoat, a doctor, was clipping the penlight she had been shining in Sam’s eyes to her lanyard.

In the space of a blink, however, the doctor vanished. Sam looked around, but the faces around her were covered in masks, their eyes the only thing that she could see. With some embarrassment, she noticed that she was mostly naked, but it was quickly replaced by pain as she was lowered into what felt like burning water. Sam tried to thrash against the people holding her, but she couldn’t shake their grip. They submerged her up to her neck, someone grabbing her head and holding it still. Sam closed her eyes again, the pain making tears well up in her eyes.

And just like that, it was gone. Sam blinked slowly, her eyes taking time to focus on the light blue wall in front of her. As she lifted her head from the pillows, she became aware of the softly beeping machines around her, and the muted conversation outside the open door. The machines began to beep more as she tried to sit up, the struggle she had moving translated into her heartbeat. Someone made a startled noise from her bedside, their chair screeching across the ground as they grabbed the rail on the side of her bed.

“Woah, Sam, calm down,” Chris said, putting his hand on her shoulder and forcing her lay back down on the bed. “You’re fine.”

“Chris? Where-?”

A coughing fit cut off her question. Chris moved out of her line of sight, before returning with a plastic cup of water. She took it awkwardly, noticing for the first time the bandages wrapped around her fingers. A few were stained a light pink, as if they had been bleeding.

“You mind if I sit?” Chris asked. “The doctors don’t want me walking on my cast too much right now.”

“Cast?” Sam asked. “Chris, where are we? What’s going on?”

“We’re at the hospital,” he said, pulling the chair she had heard closer to her bed. He took a seat, wincing slightly as he maneuvered his fully casted leg into a comfortable position. “We talked about this yesterday, remember?”

“No.”

“You did seem pretty out of it still,” he agreed. “The doctors said that the drugs you’re on would make it harder for you to remember. They started to wean you off yesterday, but they said you probably wouldn’t really wake up until today or tomorrow.”

“Why am I at a hospital?”

“Really?” Chris said. “Sam, you almost died.”

“All of us almost died,” she said. Chris winced at the blunt statement. “Why, specifically, am I in the hospital?”

“You had hypothermia,” he said. “You, Mike, and Jess almost died because of it.”

“Jess is okay?”

“Somehow, yeah. The...”

He stopped, looking at the open door with some trepidation. A nurse passed the room, barely giving either of them a glance as she continued on her way. Chris sighed, rubbing his leg above the cast.

“The wendigo,” he whispered, “it just dropped her down a mineshaft. She’s in pretty bad shape, but she’s going to be okay.”

“Why are you whispering?” Sam asked.

“The doctors all think the wendigo is us trying to cope with a bear attack or something,” he said. “They don’t believe us.”

“I’m not sure I do,” she said, playing with her straw.

“Yeah, well, just a heads up,” Chris said with a shrug.

It was quiet between them for a few minutes, only the sound of her sucking on the straw breaking the silence. When she finished Chris took the cup without a word, shuffling without his crutches to wherever it had come from. While he refilled it, she picked at the wraps on her hands. The fingers with stained bandages hurt more when she pressed against them, and the pink darkened to red after a few seconds.

“I wouldn’t play with that,” Chris said, resuming his seat. He passed the cup to her, and she took it gratefully. “Your blisters just started popping yesterday.”

“Blisters?”

“From the frostbite.”

“You said I had hypothermia,” she said.

“And you also have frostbite,” he told her. “Which is actually more disgusting than the movies make it out to be. But, hey, you didn’t lose anything...”

Chris trailed off at that, looking away from her. Sam forced a quizzical look onto her face as he turned back to look at her. He sighed, pushing up his glasses to rub at his eyes. He looked as if he wanted to apologize, but the look on her face must have changed his mind.

“You didn’t lose any fingers or toes,” he said instead. “Neither did Jess or Mike. The rest of us are still in observation, which means we just bounce between your rooms.”

“I thought you’d be with Ashley.”

“No, she’s with Mike,” Chris said. Sam raised an eyebrow, and he blushed.  “Not, with him, with him, because I’m pretty sure Jess or Matt would have something to say about that.”

“Not Em?” Sam asked.

“She’s staying in Jess’ room. She said she  wants to be there when they wake her up from the coma.”

“And away from Mike,” she said.

“She and Ash can’t be in the same room, either,” Chris said. “Hell, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to be around me right now, either.”

Sam nodded in understanding. Holding the half full cup of water was starting to make her fingers hurt, so she lowered it to rest on her lap. Chris extended a hand, and she let him take it. The water in her stomach had reminded her how long it had been since she had eaten, but the thought of food was off putting.

“Did someone call my parents?” she asked, trying to turn the conversation of what had happened in the basement.

Chris grimaced,  and turned away from her. Sam waited as he rubbed the back of his neck and turned his eyes to the ceiling. When he looked back at her, he looked resigned, and more than a little afraid.

“They’re here,” he finally said. “Well, not here, here. They’re probably still at their hotel. Visiting hours aren’t for another hour or so.”

“My dad hates hospitals,” she said. “I can’t imagine he’s happy to be here at all.”

“Yeah, well, he went off on Mr. Washington pretty hard. Security almost escorted him out.”

“The Washingtons are here?"

“They got here first,” Chris told her. “They’re the ones making sure everyone’s getting the care they need.”

“So, they found Josh?”

Chris’ mouth turned downwards, giving her all the confirmation that she needed. She closed her eyes and tried to stomp down the sadness that threatened to well up behind her eyes.

“Did they find him?” she asked, hating the small begging tone in her voice.

Chris shook his head. “The park service said that it’s too dangerous to send a retrieval team into the mines. The cops wouldn’t budge when Mrs. Washington tried.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Sam hissed under her breath. Her eyes burned, and she brushed away the tears with her hand. “They knew. They _fucking_ knew.”

“Who knew?”

“The cops. The park service rangers. They all knew.”

“Knew what?” Chris said. “What are you talking about, Sam?”

“Did you say anything about the wendigos?” she asked. “When they were questioning you?”

“Not really,” he said. “They brushed it off like I said. Bear attacks are easier to explain.”

“Well, when they were talking to me,” Sam told him, “they were really specific. They said that the bodies that they pulled out of the house were strange. Like they weren’t human.”

“So what does that have to do with anything?” Chris said, his voice shifting to a whisper when Sam looked at him sharply.

“What if they knew about the wendigos?” she asked.

“The old man said that he was the only one fighting them.”

“Because it’s suicidal,” Sam said. “Why do you think it took them until dawn to come and get us?”

“Em said that they said there was a storm. They had to wait until it blew over.”

“What storm Chris? The skies were pretty clear whenever I was out there.”

“So, what, you’re saying that they lied? That they left us up there to die?”

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Either we all vanish without an explanation, or we’re making up stories because we’re too traumatized.”

“That’s...” Chris trailed off, looking out the open door. “That’s pretty unbelievable.”

“More unbelievable than wendigos?”

“So, what, it’s all some huge conspiracy?” he asked. “And, what, they’re afraid we’re going to bring it all down?”

“That, or they thought we might be...” Sam paused, letting Chris fill in the blanks for himself. She leaned back against her pillows, the soft beeping of the heart monitor a soothing distraction from her troubling reality.

“What are we going to do?”

Sam shrugged, wincing when it pulled at her back. “Nothing. We do nothing.”

“Seriously?” Chris said. “What about all the shit we went through? Are we just supposed to forget about it? Are we supposed to leave Josh’s body up there where-”

“What else can we do?”

“We can tell someone-”

“Who, Chris?” Sam said, her voice turning sharp. “Face it, there’s no way in hell any of the people that could help us would go back up there.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they haven’t yet, have they?” she said. “And I told them that they needed to go to the mines. And they haven’t, because they know what’s up there.”

Chris shook his head, a hand coming up to cover his mouth. “I don’t want to leave Josh up there. Not like Hannah and Beth.”

“We don’t have a choice.”

“This is all fucked up,” he muttered. He turned back towards her, and Sam saw pity in his eyes. “Are you sure that you’re okay with that?”

“Why would I be? As much of an ass as he is, I can’t...”

Sam trailed off, blinking quickly to try and stop herself from crying again. Chris’ face mirrored her own, grief etching itself into the furrows of his forehead. He leaned over to the side table and grabbed a box of tissues, handing one to her. Sam dabbed at her eyes, pretending not to notice him doing the same.

“It is what it is,” she said. “We can’t change what happened.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Chris agreed, his voice slightly stuffier than it had been.

“Ms. Giddings?”

Sam looked to the door, where a woman in scrubs was smiling warmly. Chris started when he noticed her, an embarrassed look coming across his face. The nurse raised an eyebrow at him, before directing her gaze to his crutches. Chris nodded, the tips of his ears turning red as he grabbed them.

“I’ll tell the others,” he told Sam. The double meaning was clear to her, and she nodded.

“I’m Katerina,” the nurse said as Chris shuffled past her on his crutches. “Are you feeling awake?”

“I guess,” Sam said with a shrug. The corners of Katerina’s eyes tightened in sympathetic pain when Sam winced. Sam watched as she went and propped open the bathroom door before coming to the side of the bed and lowering the bed rail. She grabbed a folded wheelchair from behind the heart monitor, opening it and setting it beside the bed.

“I can’t offer you more than a sponge bath, I’m afraid,” she said, offering Sam a hand. Sam took it warily, letting the nurse help her into the chair. “But I imagine you’d enjoy the chance to get clean.”

“I thought someone bathed me,” Sam said. “I can sort of remember being put in a bathtub.”

“The immersion tub,” Katerina said. “That was for your frostbite. Which reminds me, we’re going to need to unwrap your hands and let those blisters get a little air.”

Sam let Katerina wheel her into the bathroom. It took them both a minute to transfer her from the wheelchair to the shower seat. Her ears burned when the nurse had to help her into it, her feet protesting with extreme pain when she had tried to walk to it. For her part, Katerina hadn’t said anything, only given Sam an understanding smile. She didn’t comment on Sam’s discomfort, simply taking her hand and unwrapping the sterile bandages on it. Sam closed her eyes in disgust as she saw her fingers.

“You got pretty lucky,” she said. Sam made a small questioning noise, which almost turned to a yelp as the nurse pressed a damp cloth against her skin. “It looks pretty bad now, but in a couple of weeks you won’t even be able to tell it looked like that.”

“It doesn’t even look like my hand,” Sam said. “It didn’t look like that before.”

“Out of the three of your group with frostbite, you did have the most severe case,” Katerina told her. “Still, it’s pretty amazing that none of your group lost a finger or toe. Though that one fellow did come pretty close with some...”

Judging from what Chris had said, Sam had a pretty good idea of who she was referring to. “Mike’s okay, though?”

“He’s fine,” Katerina said, applying some lotion to the open blisters. “If you want, I can wheel you over to his room after this.”

Sam made a noncommittal noise as Katerina began to rewrap her hands. Her feet looked worse when they were opened, and Sam turned her face towards the sink to avoid them. The person looking back at her from the mirror was different than the one she could remember. Someone had tied up her hair in a makeshift bun, allowing for her face to be seen unobstructed. There were scrapes on her forehead and cheek that she couldn’t remember getting, fading green bruises surrounding them. The most striking thing was her eyes. Sam almost recoiled at the sight of them and their desolate expression.

“I’m going to need you to hold your gown,” Katerina said, her fingers untying the top. “I promise I’ll be careful around the stitches.”

“What?”

Katerina motioned for her to slide the top of her gown off. Sam did so, a little uncomfortable as she sat bare from the waist up as Katerina moved behind her. In the mirror she was able to see a few small cuts on her chest, which she vaguely remembered from her hurried climb out of the mines.

“The cuts on your back. You and your friend were really lucky to get away from that bear.”

“Bear?” Sam said, before remembering what Chris had said. “Oh, yeah, right.”

“You’ve got about forty or so stitches across your shoulders and back,” she said, smiling at Sam in the mirror. “The last of them stops right above your first soulmark.”

“My soulmark?”

“If I can say, you’ve got an interesting set,” Katerina said as she wrung out her cloth. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen four in a column like that.”

“There’s four?” Sam asked, her heartbeat thundering in her ears.

“Is there not supposed to be?”

“I need to see them,” she said, trying to stand. Katerina caught her when her feet collapsed under her.

“They’re still there,” Katerina said. “The stitches didn’t obscure them-”

“No,” Sam said as she leaned heavily against the nurse. “I have to see... Please, I just need to see them.”

Something in her face must have convinced Katerina. The nurse supported her as they made their way to the mirror. Sam sat on the small counter, taking the pressure off of her feet, but didn’t turn to look in the mirror. Katerina looked concerned when she leaned forward slightly, her hands grabbing Sam’s arms and holding her upright. Closing her eyes, Sam swallowed hard and turned her head to the side.

The stitches caught her eyes first. The first of the five lines started at the top of her right shoulder, with the lowest tapering off right below her left shoulder blade, just above the word _pencil_. Despite the pain that flared across her back, Sam reached to let her bandaged fingers touch the still dark marks. She let out a breath that sounded more like a sob as she pressed them tightly against the words, her cheek coming to rest on her shoulder.

“Sam? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she managed to say . “I just... needed to see them.”

“All right,” Katerina said, letting it slide. “Your parents brought some clothes for you to wear. If you’d like, I can help you put them on. It might be a bit more comfortable than the hospital gown.”

“Yeah, sure,” Sam said, tearing her eyes away from the mirror.

Katerina gave her a concerned smile as she led her back to the wheelchair. Between the two of them, it was the work of a couple minutes to get her clothed. Sam couldn’t help but be thankful for her parent’s thoughtfulness, especially since the sweatshirt ensured that no one would see the marks on her back.

After all, Josh was dead. It was just a matter of time until his words stopped haunting her skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is just a list of what injuries I have everyone suffering from, if anyone was wondering (all links are SFW and are diagrams or medical articles):
> 
> Chris: [Impacted fracture](http://image.slidesharecdn.com/bonefracturespowerpoint-120616212326-phpapp01/95/bone-fractures-power-point-4-728.jpg?cb=1339881840) of the [fibula](http://www.sw.org/HealthLibrary?page=Fibular%20Fracture%20with%20Rehab-SportsMed). He's been put in a boot cast. He also is being monitored for any side effects of the knockout gas that Josh used.
> 
> Ashley: Pretty much the least injured out of all the kids. Just a [concussion ](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/concussion/basics/definition/con-20019272)and minor bruising from when Josh punched her as the Psycho. She is also under observation for any side effects of the knockout gas that Josh used.
> 
> Matt: Severe bruising on the chest from jumping off of the falling fire tower. He's being watched in case [of a collapsed lung](https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000087.htm), but by the time Sam's woken up, he's pretty stable.
> 
> Emily: Severe [ bite wound ](http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/768875-treatment#d10) believed to be from a wild animal (actually from the Hannah-wendigo). She's been given tetanus and rabies prophylaxis shots (although unneeded). She was also treated for a gash on her leg from the fire tower. She's under observation for the bite, but is considered stable.
> 
> Mike: [Mild to moderate hypothermia](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/hypothermia/basics/definition/con-20020453), as well as[ severe fractures](http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00257) to his ring and pinky fingers of his left hand. He's considered to be in a stable condition, but is being monitored for pneumonia because of hypothermia. He also has [mild frostbite](http://www.emedicinehealth.com/frostbite/article_em.htm) on his toes from the underground lake.
> 
> Jessica: [Transverse fracture of the tibia](http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=A00522), [severely bruised/cracked ribs](http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/broken-ribs/symptoms-causes/dxc-20169643), and [spiral fractures](http://www.redwood-ranch.com/images/spiral-fracture.jpg) to the radius and ulna of her right arm. She's also been treated for [mild hypothermia](https://medictests.com/the-quick-and-dirty-guide-to-hypothermia/) and some frostbite. She also received stitches for some of the cuts that she got from the glass and the wendigo. Currently she is in a medically induced coma so that she can recover from the trauma.
> 
> Sam: [Moderate hypothermia](http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/condition/hypothermia) and frostbite on her fingers and toes. Sam's frostbite was more severe than Mike's because of her climb out of the mines, combined with soaking herself up to the shoulders when she slipped, resulting in blisters forming when she was re-warmed. She also received stitches across her shoulders and back for the scratches she received from the wendigo on her way out of the house. She was given some painkillers, which contributed to her confused state upon waking.
> 
> As far as anything else... well, here are some [interesting facts](https://victimsofcrime.org/docs/dna-protocol/baltimore-interviewing-the-victim.pdf?sfvrsn=0) about how law enforcement are supposed to treat [victims of crimes/traumatic events](https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/reports/firstrep/bgavoc.html). 
> 
> Make of that what you will. :)


	6. october 6, 2011

 

 

Sam met Beth’s eyes across the classroom and yawned. Beth nodded, rolling her eyes as Mr. Phillips tried to get the projector working. So far he had wasted ten minutes of the period, which meant it was ten minutes closer to lunch. Her stomach growled, loud enough that Josh turned around and looked at her.

“How’re the veggies treating you?” he asked with a slight smirk. Sam gave him a sour look as she picked at a loose thread in her sweater.

“They’re great,” she said. “Don’t pretend like you aren’t hungry too.”

“Oh, I am,” he agreed as Mr. Phillips finally got the projector on. “And I have a delicious roast beef sandwich waiting for me at lunch.”

Sam shrugged, not rising to his bait. “My mom made a fluffernutter for me. I think I win.”

“Now that just sounds dirty.”

“Don’t knock it til you try it.”

“Oh, I’d try-”

“There we go!” Mr. Phillips said as his presentation appeared on the whiteboard. “Josh, you can talk to Sam during lunch. If you’d please turn around, I’ll try not to bore you.”

Josh frowned, turning around and settling in his seat again. Sam flicked the back of his head with her pencil, making him turn around slightly again. She gave him a quick smile, and the annoyed frown on his face lightened.

“So, today we’re going to discuss one of the most interesting monarchs in England’s history,” Mr. Phillips continued. “King Henry VIII of England was the second son of his father, King Henry VII, and thereby not expected to inherit the throne...”

Sam took notes as Mr. Phillips continued to speak. About halfway through she gave up on taking notes, resting her head on her hand. When he glanced away from his powerpoint, she made a cursory effort to look like she was doing something. Beth looked just as bored from across the classroom, but she actually looked like she was attempting to take notes. Sam hoped that she wouldn’t mind if she asked to copy them later.

“Now, I’m sure that many of you are familiar with Henry VIII outside of his role in the Tudor dynasty,” Mr. Phillips said, grabbing her attention again.

“His wives?” Jessica asked from the front row.

“Yes,” Mr. Phillips agreed. “Now, it is well documented that Henry VIII had one soulmark, which was not shared by his first wife, Queen Catherine.”

“Then why’d he marry her?” a boy she recognized, Zach, asked. “I mean, he’s a king. He could marry anyone he wanted.”

“Marrying for love wasn’t something that was done in royalty,” Mr. Phillips said. “And if a peasant turned out to be the king’s soul mate, the effect on the monarchy could have been disastrous. So, while Henry and Catherine were not soul mates, their relationship was recorded as being rather enjoyable.”

“But, didn’t he have, like, six wives?”

“As well as many mistresses, yes. Catherine had a few pregnancies that ended in stillbirths before having a daughter, Mary, who later on became Queen. Henry, however, wanted a son, and believed that Catherine would be unable to give him one.”

“That seems kind of weird,” Matt said. “I mean, you said that his daughter became queen, right?”

“Henry was of the opinion that he needed a male heir,” Mr. Phillips said. “Unfortunately, all of his sons either died or were born stillborn, and his daughter Mary took the throne after the death of her half brother Edward VI.”

“But what about his soul mate?” Beth asked, drawing the question back around. “I mean, did he ever find them?”

Mr. Phillips’ shoulders fell, his attempt at getting them away from the soul mate question having failed. “Due to Henry’s many marriages, there is no clear definition as to who his _true_ soul mate was. It is widely speculated, however, that his last wife, Catherine Parr, might have had his words.”

“What about the others?” Sam asked, her interest piqued. “I mean, what happened to them?”

“Divorced, beheaded, died,” Josh said in an almost sing-songy tone of voice. “Divorced, beheaded, survived.”

“A useful way of remembering their fates, yes,” Mr. Phillips said, a tinge of annoyance in his voice. Sam didn’t need to see Josh’s face to know that he wore a smug smirk.

“Didn’t they have soul mates, though?” Jess pushed. “I mean, they had to have, right?”

“Yes, they did” Mr. Phillips said, letting the line of questioning continue. “Due to the beliefs of the Church at the time, revealing soulmarks was a very private affair, and, again, if a soul mate was of a different class, there was little that could be done.

“Anne Boleyn, however, is known to have met her soul mate prior to her marriage to Henry,” he said. “While she was judged guilty of treason, among other things, it is said that Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, collapsed in the chamber. According to the notes of the trial, Anne had confessed that she and Percy had said the other’s words when they had first met, and only the king’s interest in Anne had stopped their marriage.”

“He can’t have cared that much,” Zach said. “I mean, she still died.”

“If he had agreed, he could have ended up with her same fate,” Mr. Phillips replied.

“It still sucks for her,” Beth said.

“Unlike Anne, however,” Mr. Phillips continued, ignoring Beth’s interruption. “Catherine Parr is recorded as having married all of her soul mates. There is some contention with this claim, however, since her two marriages before Henry ended with the deaths of her husbands, which would mean that their words were scarred over by the time of her marriage to the king.”

“So, what, she got married three times?” Zach asked, the corners of his mouth turning down in a frown.

“Four, actually,” Mr. Phillips corrected. “And, according to some documents from the queen’s personal letters, at least two of her soulmates interacted with each other. Whether or not Thomas Seymour agreed with Catherine’s decision to marry Henry, he accepted a position in Brussels instead of fighting a losing battle for her hand.”

“So, what, he gave her up?” Jessica said. “That sucks.”

Sam nodded her agreement, seeing a few of her classmates do the same. Matt was frowning, his arms crossed over his chest. She followed his gaze not to Mr. Phillips, but to Zach. Zach, for his part, seemed oblivious the murderous glare that Matt was giving him. His frown had only deepened as Mr. Phillips continued, sending an an unpleasant chill down her neck. He turned, as if feeling her gaze, and gave her a wink. Sam turned away, feeling the beginnings of a frown on her face as well.

“Wait, I thought you said Henry only one soulmark,” Josh said, drawing her back into the discussion. “How come Catherine had four?”

“I’m assuming you didn’t sleep through your seminar classes, Josh” Mr. Phillips said, a hint of humor in his voice. “But for anyone who did, I’d like to remind you that it possible for one soulmate to have multiple marks and another to only have one. Catherine was most likely one of these individuals. But we were discussing English royalty, not soulmates, so if everyone would please-”

The bell rang, and Sam saw Beth smirk. Mr. Phillips sighed as the class began to pack up their books. Josh was already halfway to the door, shooting her a cheeky grin over his shoulder. Sam stayed in her seat to let the crowd thin out. In their haste to get to lunch, someone knocked her pencil case from her desk. Her pens and pencils scattered across the floor, and she couldn’t help but sigh in annoyance.

“You need help, Sam?” Matt asked as he walked past her aisle.

“I’ve got it,” she said, giving him a smile. “Save me a seat at the lunch table?”

“As if anyone would forget,” he said with a chuckle. “See you in a few.”

Sam gave him a short nod. As she moved to stand again, she noticed a pen that had skidded almost an entire row over. Before she could reach out to grab it, someone else did. Sam got to her feet, taking the offered pencil from Zach.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Hey, no problem,” he said as she gathered her books. “I wouldn’t want to be rude.”

“Yeah, well, still,” Sam said, giving him a tight smile. “I don’t think anyone besides you and Matt noticed.”

She walked to the door, barely noticing as he followed behind her. Beth waved at her from her locker, but turned and began walking to the cafeteria before Sam could stop her.

“So, that class was totally stupid, right?” Zach asked as she turned down the hallway her locker was on.

Sam shrugged. “I mean, it was kind of cool.”

“If you mean that the whole thing is totally fake, then yeah,” Zach told her, walking a few lockers down and twirling the dial.

Sam rolled her eyes behind the safety of her locker door, stuffing her books in haphazardly. Pulling her lunchbox out of her backpack, she shut the door, only to jump in surprise at seeing Zach leaning on the locker next to hers.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to freak you out,” he said, an easy smile stretching across his face.

“It’s fine. I’m just going...” She pointed down the stairs, towards the cafeteria.  

“I’ll walk with you,” Zach said, ignoring her attempt at ending their conversation.

She sighed internally, but pasted an indifferent smile on her face. “Well, I’m just going to meet up with Matt and the guys. They probably wouldn’t mind if you joined us.”

“Nah,” he replied with a rueful shake of his head. “Me and him don’t really get along.”

“Oh?”

“Eh, it’s just a bullshit thing. It’s not your problem.”

“I guess,” Sam said. “I just thought everyone liked him. He’s kind of hard to hate.”

“Well, it’s not like I hate him,” Zach defended himself. “I mean, have you seen his blitz?  The dude’s amazing on the field.”

“Yeah, totally,” Sam agreed. “Jess dragged Em and I to a couple of games last season.”

“I thought I had seen you hanging out with them. ‘Course, it’s not hard to pick them out of group.”

“You’re only saying that because you’re like six feet tall. I’m pretty sure you can see everyone in a crowd.”

“Only the ones I bother looking for,” he replied.

Sam raised an eyebrow, not rising to the flirt. “Really? I guess they should be flattered then.”

“I don’t really go for people like them,” Zach said with a shrug. “Maybe last year, before Emily got caught up we could have had something, but, hey, win some lose some.”

“Well, she’s not dating anyone right now. You should go for it.”

“I don’t want to date one of them. It’s just kind of wrong, you know?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Sam asked as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “Em totally needs a date for homecoming. Matt’s taking Jules, and Mike’s been dating Victoria for almost six months, so he’s probably going to take her. And I think James asked Jess if she wanted to go with him.”

“She’s not really my type,” he said.

Zach stopped in the middle of the hallway, and Sam did as well. He bit his lip, glancing away from her to the display case that lined the wall until the cafeteria doors. She could hear the dull roar of the cafeteria, but something about Zach’s behavior made her stay. He opened his mouth, then closed it, his brow furrowing as he tried to put together what he was trying to say.

“I could talk to Em about it,” she offered. “Put in a good word for you?”

“It’s not-” Zach shook his head. “I just don’t like people like her, okay?”

“People like her?” Sam asked. “What does that even mean?”

“You know,” he said with a shrug.

“I really don’t.”

Sam stepped forward, coming between Zach and the display case. She crossed her arms, her lunchbag thumping against her hip. He rolled his eyes and shifted his feet, his jaw clenching. An annoyed expression crossed his face as she stared him down. Zach sighed and let his jaw relax.

“It’s all a bunch of bullshit,” he told her. “I mean, why can’t they just leave everyone else alone, you know?”

“Who leave who alone?”

“ _Them_ ,” Zach said, as if that explained everything.

And, perhaps to him, it did. Sam shook her head, uncomprehendingly. Her eyes narrowed as he tipped his head backwards and ran his hand through his dark hair. When she didn’t acknowledge her understanding of his vague explanation, he sighed in annoyance.

“I mean, it’s not like they’re like you or me,” Zach said. “They’re...”

He paused, looking past her into the display case. With a sigh, he rubbed his forehead and moved towards the cafeteria doors. Sam stepped in front of him, forcing him to stop. She could see his jaw clench in annoyance, but held her place.

“You’re not making sense,” Sam told him. “There’s nothing wrong with Emily. Or Matt. Or Mike and Jessica.”

“They’re selfish!”

Sam rocked back on her heels, the vitriol behind the words stunning her. Zach let out a huff and turned his head away from her, crossing his arms across his chest. A dark expression crossed his face, his mouth twisting into a sneer.

“They’re not like us, Sam.” Zach continued, almost spitting the words out. “They’re _broken_ , and _selfish_ , and _wrong_.”

“How can you say that?” she asked. Her disgust and anger must have shown on her face, as Zach took a step away from her.

“Because it’s true,” he said. “Why would they need to date someone else when they’ve got each other? It’s because whatever created the marks knew that they were wrong. They’re not even close to being like you or me, Sam. I mean, who else would have such a broken soul that they needed three other people?”

“Hey, Sammy!”

Sam turned slightly, seeing Josh standing just outside the doors of the cafeteria. She forced a smile onto her face and waved at him. Something that looked like concern crossed over his face, but he returned her wave.

“I’ll be in in a minute,” she called to him. “Make sure Matt saved me a seat, yeah?”

“You got it,” he agreed. Sam watched, a speck of warmth in her chest as he gave her a cheeky grin before walking back inside the cafeteria.

“He’s just like them, you know,” Zach said as she turned towards him again. “Broken. The only difference is, he hasn’t met his soulmates yet.”

Sam flinched. The old fear that she had pushed away, shut away in the back of her mind, came roaring forward. Josh had never said anything about the first time they had spoken to each other. He had never even hinted at the fact that something significant might have occurred. That she had said _his_ words.

Her words were pretty commonplace, after all. Everyone had asked for a pencil at one time or another. But it had felt different with Josh. _He_ had looked different when she said them. Or maybe she was remembering it wrong. Maybe he wasn’t her soulmate.

The realization stung. For a moment, Sam felt as if someone had torn her heart from her chest. Zach looked at her oddly as she covered the pain it had caused with a cough.

“There’s nothing wrong with Josh,” Sam said, shoving the pain aside.

If anything else, Josh was her friend. And no one was going to talk about him like that. Taking a step forward, Sam pushed herself onto her toes so that she could meet Zach eye to eye.

Zach cocked his head to the side, his eyes narrowing for a minute as he met her gaze. Sam held her position, ignoring the stress it was placing on her toes. A cruel smile broke out over Zach’s face, a chuckle escaping his chest.

“You like _him_?”

“He’s one of my friends.”

“Friends don’t look at each other like that,” Zach said, waving away her dismissal. “You want him to be your soulmate.”

“Back off, Zach,” Sam said, stepping into his space. When she raised her hand, he grabbed her wrist, holding it tightly in his grip. Sam tugged at it, clenching her jaw when she couldn’t get him to budge.

“You’re just going to break your heart,” he told her.

“Let go,” she hissed.

As much as she hated it, a few tears gathered at the corner of her eyes. She turned her head away from him and tried to blink them away. Zach rolled his eyes, pushing her back slightly as he released her. Sam stumbled, her shoulders hitting the glass of the display case.

“You don’t need someone like him, Sam. He’s not like us-”

“You mean like you,” Sam said, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes. Zach looked surprised as she glared at him.

“You’re not like them, Sam,” he said, although his tone betrayed his uncertainty.

“What makes me so different?” she asked him.

“You only have one mark,” he told her. “You didn’t go to their seminar-”

“Newsflash, Zach,” she said, stepping forward and poking him in the chest. “I didn’t go here in eighth grade.”

“But you’re _normal_.”

The words hurt almost as much as the pain in her heart. Zach’s expression changed, betrayal and hurt replacing the anger. His nostrils flared, and the anger returned, his blue eyes turning as cold as ice.

“You lied to me.”

“You never asked,” she replied.

“You’re worse than them, then!” he spat in her face. “At least they’re honest about being broken. You lie to everyone about being like them, like you’re normal!”

“I am normal!” Sam shot back. “What does it matter that I have more than one soulmate? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Zach shook his head in disbelief. “Just stay away from me.”

Before she could retort, he pushed her roughly out of his way. Sam felt her back hit the glass of the display case, and then go through it. Whatever sound it made was drowned out by crack she felt when her head hit the edge of a shelf. Sam screwed her eyes shut, breathing deeply through her nose. She wasn’t going to let Zach have the pleasure of seeing her in pain.

When she finally pulled herself out of the display case, he was nowhere to be seen. Brushing off a few pieces of glass, Sam shook her head, feeling a few more pieces fall through her hair. She reached up and ran her fingers through it, but didn’t feel anything else fall. Sam swayed as she began to walk forward, barely catching herself on the edge of the case. She looked at the shattered glass and broken wood, debating on what to do.

Glancing down the hallway, Sam didn’t see anyone coming to investigate. Sam pushed some of the glass closer to the display case, her decision made. She could let someone know what had happened after she ate. Getting some food into her stomach would probably help the headache she felt building behind her eyes. And being around her friends would get rid of the sour thoughts Zach had planted in her head. Sam winced as she heard a piece of glass crack underneath her sneaker, but walked to the cafeteria without any further issues.

Hannah waved at her from a table that their group had claimed. Sam smiled, slipping into the seat between the twins. Beth returned the smile, before turning back to Jessica, who had a page of notes in front of her.

“I just don’t get it,” Jessica said, sounding annoyed. “Why can’t I just solve for _x_ like before?”

“That’s not the point,” Emily replied from her other side.

Sam felt her lips twitch up as the two tried to explain the problems again, to Jessica’s dismay. As she moved to open her lunchbox, she saw Josh’s hand reach over Hannah’s tray and whisk it away. He smirked as she leaned over the table to stare at him. A faint pang of loss made her smile falter; Josh didn’t see it, his focus intent on opening her lunchbox.

“Give it, Josh.”

“Oh, come on Sam-I-Am,” Josh teased, pulling out her sandwich. “You promised I could try some of that sandwich- what was it?”

“A fluffernutter,” she told him, reaching across Hannah, who gave them both a bemused look. “And I didn’t say you could try it.”

“Didn’t you?” he asked. “I would love to try your fluffernutter anytime.”

“Oh my god, that sounds so bad when you say it like that,” Sam said with a wince.

“Told you.”

Sam rolled her eyes and dragged her lunchbox back in front of her. As her arm pulled back, she heard the faint sound of glass hitting something. Hannah picked a piece of glass off her tray, confusion wrinkling her brow.

“What is this?” she asked, holding the sliver in front of her eyes.

Sam shrugged, pulling her sandwich out of her lunchbox. It must have been stuck to the back of her shirt, and jostled loose. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Josh take the piece of glass from Hannah. His eyes narrowed as he wrapped it in his napkin.

“I can’t believe it was in your lunch,” he said, putting the glass on his empty tray.

“It wasn’t,” Hannah replied, sounding just as confused as him. “It fell there when Sam was grabbing-”

Hannah stopped, turning in her seat to face Sam. She stopped mid-bite, meeting Hannah’s eyes. When she ran her hands over Sam’s shoulder and back, Sam fought the urge to pull away. Hannah flinched, her hand pulling away for a moment, before going back and picking something off the back of her sweater.

“Sam, what is this?” Hannah asked, holding another piece of glass up for her to see. The tip of it was bright red, and Sam could see a pinprick of blood welling up on the tip of Hannah’s finger.

“It’s glass,” Sam said. “I was going to go to the nurse after I ate.”

“Why do you have glass on your back?” Hannah said, a note of alarm entering her voice.

Before Sam could stop her, Hannah got out of her chair. Her tone, if not her rapid abandonment of her seat, drew Matt’s attention from across the table. Ashley looked over as well, their conversation halting as they saw Hannah’s face over her shoulder.

“Josh, hand me a napkin,” Hannah demanded.

Josh frowned, but handed her one. Sam tried to pull away when she pressed it against the back of her head, dropping her sandwich onto the table.

“Stop that,” Sam said, trying to wiggle away.

“Sam, you’re bleeding,” she told her. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Sam replied, stuffing half of her sandwich back in its baggie. It was obvious that Hannah wasn’t going to let her finish her lunch. Not that she really wanted to, the pressure of the napkin on the back of her head making her slightly nauseous. “I just fell.”

“Why didn’t Zach say anything?” Josh asked.

“I don’t know,” she lied.

Her eyes met Matt’s across the table, watching as he frowned. He turned in his seat, looking over his shoulder. Sam could barely see Zach and some of the other members of the football team at a table a few down from theirs. She saw Matt clench his jaw, and before she could ask, he left their table. Emily and Jessica looked between him and her, their confusion evident. Beth looked to her twin, communicating something that only the two of them could understand.

“Well, we’ve got to get you to the nurse,” Hannah said as Beth drew Emily and Jess back into a conversation. “C’mon, Sam.”

Reluctantly, Sam got up from her seat. Ashley got up as well, and Sam couldn’t help the small smile it brought to her face.Josh stayed seated, his gaze fixed on Matt’s back. There was something in the way he was looking at the table, almost calculating in its intensity. Sam glanced over at Matt as well, but apart from a few of the other player’s expressions, she couldn’t tell what was going on. The ones that she could see looked shocked, their eyes going from Matt to whoever he was talking to.

Sam saw a few of the players look at her as Hannah and Ashley led her towards the exit. Zach’s eyes slid around Matt to look at, and then past, her. Hannah tugged on her arm, and Sam realized that she had stopped, her entire being focused on Zach’s avoidance of her. Forcing herself to look away, Sam walked into the hall. Both of her escorts looked shocked at the shattered display case, and Ashley gave her hand a small squeeze as they went past. As they entered the office, Mrs. Dunne looked up from her computer.

“Something wrong, girls?” she asked, getting up.

“Sam fell through the awards case,” Hannah said. “There’s a cut or something on the back of her head.”

“There’s probably some glass, too,” Ashley added. “Hannah found a few pieces on her back.”

“Sam?” Mrs. Dunne said. “Can you step back here?”

Unthreading her hand from Ashley’s, Sam stepped out from between the two, walking through the door to where she remembered the nurse’s office to be. She could hear Mrs. Dunne saying something to them as she sat down on one of the cots. The door to the office opened and closed again, and the sound of someone picking up a phone. She couldn’t make out the hushed sounds, but soon enough it was back in it’s cradle. Her stomach growled, and Sam pursed her lips in annoyance, realizing that she had left her lunchbox in the cafeteria.

“Sorry about that,” Mrs. Dunne said, entering the room. “I had to call maintenance. We don’t want anyone else falling on that glass, do we?”

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, looking away from her sympathetic smile.

“You must have hit it pretty hard,” she continued, pulling on a pair of gloves.

She gestured for Sam to turn slightly, pulling a comb out from one of the drawers. Sam bit the inside of her cheek as Mrs. Dunne ran it through her hair a few times. What sounded like a few smaller pieces of glass hit the floor. Mrs. Dunne made a few noncommittal noises, filling the silence. When she seemed satisfied that there wasn’t any more glass in Sam’s hair, she set in on the cot. Sam felt Mrs. Dunne probe the back of her head, and she could help but grab the thin paper, crinkling it loudly in her hand.

“It doesn’t look like the glass cut you,” Mrs. Dunne told her. “Head wounds bleed a lot. Do you have a headache?”

“Not really,” she said. “My head hurt a bit after, but it doesn’t right now.”

“I’m going to need to call your parents. Are they home?”

Sam shook her head as Mrs. Dunne walked around to face her again. “Dad’s at the base. And Mom’s giving tours of a new development. I’d rather not bother them. ”

Mrs. Dunne frowned as she tugged off the plastic gloves. “You seem okay, but if you hit your head, I really think you need to see a doctor. Just in case.”

“I feel fine,” Sam said, mustering up a smile. “It doesn’t even hurt anymore.”

“I’m sure,” she said, shaking her head fondly. “How about we make a deal, then?”

“Okay...”

“There’s a classroom just next door,” Mrs. Dunne told her. “It’s used for in school suspensions mostly. I’ll make sure your work for your next two classes is brought down, and you can work on there until school lets out.”

“Why can’t I just go to class?” Sam asked. “I told you, I feel fine.”

“I just want to keep an eye on you,” Mrs. Dunne said. “Just to be safe. And, Sam?”

Sam looked at her, seeing something behind the compassion in Mrs. Dunne’s eyes. “Yes?”

“You know you can tell me if something happened, right?”

“I fell,” Sam said.

The lie hung in the air between them. Mrs. Dunne sighed exasperatedly, tossing the slightly bloody gloves in the trash.

“Well,” she said, “if you happen to remember who was with you when you _fell_ -”

Sam bit the inside of her lip and swallowed. Mrs. Dunne shook her head, obviously seeing the reaction.

“If you do remember, tell me?” she asked. “I promise, you won’t get in trouble because of it.”

Sam nodded, but held her silence. A small chime made both of them look to the door. Mrs. Dunne held up a finger, silently asking her to wait, and went to see who had come in. Sam let her head fall forward, her blonde hair falling around her face. Careful not to pull too hard, she pulled it over her shoulder. Her scalp ached where Mrs. Dunne had poked at it, but it was rapidly fading.

As Sam sat up again and tossed her hair back over her shoulder, Mrs. Dunne reentered the room. A familiar red lunchbox was in her hands, and Sam couldn’t help the real smile that crossed her face.

“Hannah dropped it off for you,” she said, holding it out to Sam. “She said she’d let your teachers know what was going on.”

The muffled sound of a bell ringing caught both of their ears. Mrs. Dunne smiled, and watched as she got up from the cot. Either realizing that Sam didn’t want to talk, or seeing no further reason to, Mrs. Dunne led Sam down two doors to a small classroom-like room. There were eight seats arranged before a whiteboard, but Sam doubted they were ever all used.

“Hannah said she’d be down with your classwork,” Mrs. Dunne said as Sam took a seat closer to the door. “I’ll get it to you as soon as it does.”

“Thanks,” Sam said. She paused, her hand tightening on the handle of her lunchbox for a moment. “Can I eat in here?”

Mrs. Dunne’s smile turned fond. “Well, usually no. However, I think in this case, I can bend the rules a bit.”

Sam opened her lunchbox as soon as Mrs. Dunne agreed. Someone, most likely Hannah, had re-bagged her sandwich. She wasted no time taking it out again, devouring the peanut butter and marshmallow fluff as if she was starving. Stuffing the empty baggie back into her lunchbox, Sam pulled out a pack of ranch dressing and another baggie full of celery and carrots. She took it a bit slower this time, the hunger that she had felt growing less urgent.

“I told you, he’s fucking crazy!”

Whoever was talking sounded like they were talking out of the side of their mouth.Sam set her lunch down and looked to the door. It was cracked slightly, allowing the sound of some kind of  scuffle through. She got up and peered through the crack, only to have Mrs. Dunne stand up and block her view.  

“You started it, asshole.”

Sam frowned at hearing Josh’s tone. She had heard him angry before, especially after she had collaborated with Hannah to prank him over the summer. His anger was a flash in the pan, blow over quickly kind of thing. Sam had almost been frightened when he had found them, his face dark with rage as he held his tattered film reels. It was only the knowledge that the real reels had been packed away where he wouldn’t find them that had allowed her to laugh and joke along with Hannah. He had cooled off quickly, promising revenge after they had revealed their prank.

Now? Josh sounded cold. As if he was stopping himself from doing something. Or, judging by the fact that he was already in the office, doing something more.

“Take him to the sick room,” Mrs. Dunne said.

She turned slightly, allowing Sam to catch a glimpse of who was talking. Zach, supported by another football player, grimaced as he was helped out of her sight. His lip was split, and from the bright red blossoming along his jaw, Sam could guess what had happened, though not what caused it.

“I’ll put him in the other room,” another voice, one she recognized as her literature teacher, said. “I’ve got to get back to my class-”

Sam darted away from the door, not wanting to get caught. When the door was pushed in, she looked up from her desk, feigning surprise at seeing Mr. Frye escorting Josh. They both looked just as surprised as she was faking, though Josh’s had a hint of shame when he met her eyes.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. “I thought Hannah was going to be bringing my work down.”

“Nothing to worry about,” Mr. Frye said. He let go of Josh’s arm, pointing him at a seat away from hers. Josh shambled over to it, disgust curling the corners of his lips. “I’ll send her down with work for both of you. Josh-”

“I’m not apologizing,” Josh sneered. “Zach knows what he did.”

Mr. Frye rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “I’m going to recommend two weeks in-school suspension,” he told him. “An apology can drop that to one.”

“And what, he gets off scot-free?”

“Just,” Mr. Frye reached up and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Just think about it, okay Josh?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Mr. Frye sighed again, but accepted the insincere agreement. He shut the door as he left, leaving the two of them alone. Sam glanced at Josh, before continuing to eat her veggies. It wasn’t long before Josh began to fidget, tapping a staccato beat on the floor with the toe of his shoe. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lay his head on his arms, before jerking back as if stung.

“Fuck,” he muttered, waving his hand.

Sam sat her veggies back on her desk and got up. Josh gave her an annoyed look as she perched on the arm of the desk next to him, clutching his hand to his chest defensively. Sam shook her head and held out her hand. Josh grimaced, and after a few more seconds, placed his hand in hers.

“So, what happened?”

Josh looked surprised by her nonchalant tone. Or maybe it was the way that she was looking over his hand like it didn’t surprise her.

“Nothing,” he said, trying to play it off. Sam rolled her eyes as she poked at the skin around his knuckles, eliciting a hiss. “He deserved it.”

“Did he?” she asked, shifting his hand slightly.

Josh winced, but didn’t try to pull away. “You know what he did.”

“I also know how to throw a punch,” Sam told him. “You don’t.”

“He hurt you,” Josh said. Sam raised an eyebrow, surprised at the anger in his voice. . “And you’re just going to let him get away with it?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“He needs to pay- ow!”

Sam let him pull his hand away. “You’re going to need to get that cleaned. But you didn’t break anything, so that’s good.”

“How would you even know that?” Josh asked, holding his left hand protectively over the knuckles of his right.

“I used to do that a lot,” Sam said, gesturing towards his covered hand. “My dad has a heavy bag set up in the basement that I used to train with. He made sure pretty quickly that I knew how to punch something.”

“You didn’t punch Zach.”

“I didn’t have time,” she said. “He was gone before I got back up. And it would have just proved his point.”

“His point?” he said. “Sam, he made his point when he hurt you.”

Sam looked away, her eyes going to the slowly ticking clock above the whiteboard. The silence hung between them. Josh let out a few small hisses as he poked at the split skin of his knuckles, but didn’t try and further the conversation.

“I guess _I_ didn’t see the point,” Sam finally said. She turned back to Josh and shrugged. “Hurting him... what would it have proved? I would have been the one to get in trouble, and he could keep saying that stuff.”

“Saying?” Josh asked.

The door cracking open interrupted them. Hannah peeked around the edge, flashing a bright smile to Sam before her eyes slid to Josh. Sam moved, walking back to the desk she had claimed as hers, putting some space between herself and Josh. She took the few pages that Hannah handed to her, and pretended to study them. The words seemed to blur before her eyes as she focused on the whispers between the siblings.

“Are you okay?” Hannah asked.

“I’m fine.”

“I mean, are you...” She wiggled her hand, and garnered a huffed laugh.

“He hurt her,” Josh muttered, his eyes cutting to hers. Sam looked back to the papers in front of her, trying to pretend like she wasn’t eavesdropping. “Couldn’t let him get away with it.”

Sam blinked, trying to get rid of the tears that threatened to fall from her eyes. The fact that Josh cared enough about her to punch someone in her honor made her heart throb painfully in her chest. She quashed the feeling, quietly reminding herself of reality. Josh would have done the same for Emily, or Jessica. He might have even done it for Matt and Mike, if they didn’t do it first.

Which meant that she had to do right by him. Even if Josh had been completely stupid in some misguided quest to defend her honor, he had done it because of their friendship. Josh and Hannah looked at her strangely as she got up, their conversation halting. Sam shook her head at Hannah’s questioning look, and headed to the door. She closed it behind her, leaning her head against the fake wood.

And pulled back with a grimace. Even though the injury had mostly numbed, the accidental motion reminded her that it was there. Brushing it from her mind, Sam walked to the door of the nurse’s office. Zach was laying on one of the cots, an ice pack pressed to his jaw. When he saw her, some of the hate that she had seen earlier crossed his face, before he flinched and pressed the ice pack closer.

“Something wrong, Sam?” Mrs. Dunne asked as she dried her hands with a paper towel. “Do you have a headache?”

“No, I was...” Sam paused, her eyes flicking to Zach. “I was wondering if I could talk to you. About what you said earlier?”

Mrs. Dunne blinked, obviously confused by her vague phrasing. She walked towards Sam, flicking the lights to dim as she went into the hallway. Sam bit her lip, and scooted away from the door, out of what she hoped was Zach’s range of hearing. Mrs. Dunne followed her, obvious confusion on her face.

“I didn’t fall,” Sam whispered.

Mrs. Dunne’s gaze turned into one of understanding. She held up a finger and walked around Sam to another door. The office behind it was empty, and she ushered Sam in, before closing the door behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this chapter was a bit of an interesting one. Many thanks to my lovely beta, misplacedgamer, who helped me power through the middle of the chapter. That whole section, with Zach talking to Sam, was really hard to write, for multiple reasons. 
> 
> Just some explanation of how I wrote Zach: he is deliberately using [othering](http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30018508) (specifically the first two sections of that paper, but the rest is an interesting read as well) in how he refers to Matt, Emily, Jessica, Mike, Josh, and later Sam. His "idea" of normal soulmate relationships is between two people, therefore, anyone breaking this mould is deviant. Keep in mind that Zach is between the ages of 16 and 17, and probably lives with his parents. While it doesn't exclude the possibility of him thinking these thoughts on his own, being raised in an environment where such things are considered and talked about as negative would influence how Zach sees the world, and how he treats others.
> 
> Also, as you may have noted, I've started to date the chapters. I've had the rough dates in my head, but I thought everyone would like to see when exactly everything is taking place. :)


End file.
